tic music who has not loved. And a broken heart in the past, and
plenty of good food in the present--these may very well make a great
artiste. But a heart that _keeps on_ breaking, that is not permitted
to heal itself--no, that is not good. _A la fin_, the voice breaks
also."

Hence he regarded his favourite pupil with considerable anxiety. To
his experienced eye it was palpable that the happenings of her married
life had tried Diana's strength almost to breaking point, and that the
enthusiasm and energy with which, seeking an anodyne to pain, she had
flung herself into her work, would act either one way or the
other--would either finish the job, so that the frayed nerves gave way,
culminating in a serious breakdown of her health, or so fill her
horizon that the memories of the past gradually receded into
insignificance.

The cup of fame, newly held to her lips, could not but prove an
intoxicating draught. There was a rushing excitement, an exhilaration
about her life as a well-known public singer, which acted as a constant
stimulus. The enthusiastic acclamations with which she was everywhere
received, the adulation that invariably surrounded her, and the intense
joy which, as a genuine artist, she derived from the work itself, all
acted as a narcotic to the pain of memory, and out of these she tried
to build up a new life for herself, a life in which love should have
neither part nor lot, but wherein added fame and recognition was to be
the ultimate goal.

Her singing had improved; there was a new depth of feeling in her
interpretation which her own pain and suffering had taught her, and it
was no infrequent thing for part of her audience to be moved to tears,
wistfully reminded of some long-dead romance, when she sang "The Haven
of Memory"--a song which came to be associated with her name much in
the same way that "Home, Sweet Home" was associated with another great
singer, whose golden voice gave new meaning to the familiar words.

Olga Lermontof still remained her accompanist. For some unfathomed
reason she no longer flung out the bitter gibes and thrusts at
Errington which had formerly sprung so readily to her lips, and Diana
grimly ascribed this forbearance to an odd kind of delicacy--the
generosity of the victor who refuses to triumph openly over the
vanquished!

Once, in a bitter mood, Diana had taxed her with it.

"You must feel satisfied now that you have achieved your object," she
told her.