sing herself on the plea that her professional engagements demanded
all her energies. And certainly, since the immediate and overwhelming
success which she had achieved at Covent Garden, her operatic work had
made immense demands both upon her time and physical strength.

But, with the advent of autumn, the probabilities of a meeting between
husband and wife were increased a hundredfold, since Diana's
engagements included a considerable number of private receptions in
addition to her concert work, and she never sang at a big society crush
without an inward apprehension that she might encounter Max amongst the
guests.

She shrank from meeting him again as a wounded man shrinks from an
accidental touch upon his hurt. It had been easy enough, in the first
intolerant passion which had overwhelmed her, to contemplate life apart
from him. Indeed, to leave him had seemed the only obvious course to
save her from the daily flagellation of her love, the hourly insult to
her dignity, that his relations with Adrienne de Gervais and the whole
mystery which hung about his actions had engendered.

But when once the cord had been cut, and life in its actuality had to
be faced apart from him, Diana found that love, hurt and buffeted
though it may be, still remains love, a thing of flame and fire, its
very essence a desire for the loved one's presence.

Every fibre of her being cried aloud for Max, and there were times when
the longing for the warm, human touch of his hand, for the sound of his
voice, grew almost unbearable. Yet any meeting between them could be
but a barren reminder of the past, revitalising the dull ache of
longing into a quick and overmastering agony, and, realising this,
Diana recoiled from the possibility with a fear almost bordering upon
panic.

She achieved a certain feeling of security in the fact that she had
made her home with Baroni and his sister. Signora Evanci mothered her
and petted her and fussed over her, much as she did over Baroni
himself, and the old _maestro_, aware of the tangle of Diana's
matrimonial affairs, and ambitious for her artistic future, was likely
to do his utmost to avert a meeting between husband and wife--since
emotional crises are apt to impair the voice.

From Baroni's point of view, the happenings of life were chiefly of
importance in so far as they tended towards the perfecting of the
artiste.

"Love is good," he had said on one occasion. "No one can interpret
roman