had gone away and the house was empty and
closed.

Diana retraced her steps homeward, conscious of a queer feeling of
satisfaction. Often the thought that Max and Adrienne might be
together had tortured her almost beyond endurance, adding a keener edge
to the pain of separation.

Pain! Life seemed made up of pain these days. Sometimes she wondered
how much a single human being was capable of bearing.

It was months--an eternity--since she and Max had parted, and still her
heart cried out for him, fighting the bitter anger and distrust that
had driven her from him.

She felt she could have borne it more easily had he died. Then the
remembrance of his love would still have been hers to hold and keep,
something most precious and unspoilt. But now, each memory of their
life together was tarnished with doubt and suspicion and mistrust. She
had put him to the test, bade him choose betwixt her and Adrienne,
claiming his confidence as her right--and he had chosen Adrienne and
declined to trust her with his secret.

She told herself that had he loved her, he must have yielded. No man
who cared could have refused her, and the scourge of wounded pride
drove her into that outer darkness where bitterness and "proper
self-respect" defile the face of Love.

She had turned desperately to her work for distraction from the
ceaseless torture of her thoughts, but not all the work in the world
had been able to silence the cry of her heart.

For work can do no more than fill the day, and though Diana feverishly
crammed each day so full that there was little time to think and
remember, the nights remained--the interminable nights, when she was
alone with her own soul, and when the memories which the day's work had
beaten back came pressing in upon her.

Oh, God! The nights--the endless, intolerable nights! . . .

CHAPTER XXIV

THE VISION OF LOVE

A week after her visit to Somervell Street, the thing which Diana had
dreaded came to pass.

She was attending a reception at the French Embassy, and as she made
her way through the crowded rooms, followed by Olga Lermontof--who
frequently added to the duties of accompanist those of _dame de
compagnie_ to the great _prima donna_--she came suddenly face to face
with Max.

To many of us the anticipation of an unpleasant happening is far more
agonising than the actual thing itself. The mind, brooding
apprehensively upon what may conceivably occur, exaggerates the
possib