have found, always waiting for him, a refuge, a quiet
haven where love dwelt and where he might forget for a space and be at
rest. All this, which had been hers to give, she had withheld.

The silence deepened in the room. The brilliant sunshine, slanting in
through the slats of the Venetian blinds, seemed out of place in what had
suddenly become a temple of pain. Somewhere outside a robin chirruped,
the cheery little sound holding, for one of the two women sitting there,
a note of hitter mockery.

Suddenly Diana dropped her head on her hands with a shudder.

"Oh, God!" she whispered. "Oh, God!"

Olga leaned forward and laid a hand on her knee.

"You can go back to him now, and give him all the happiness that he has
missed," she said steadily.

"Go back to him?" Diana lifted her head and stared at her with dull
eyes. "Oh, no. I shan't do that."

"You won't go back?" Olga spoke slowly, as though she doubted her own
hearing.

A faint, derisive smile flickered across Diana's lips. "How could I? Do
you suppose that--that having failed him when he asked me to believe in
him, I could go back to him now--now that I know everything? . . . Oh,
no, I couldn't do that. I've nothing to offer him--now--nothing to
give--neither faith nor trust, because I know the whole truth." She
spoke with the quiet finality of one who can see no hope, no possibility
of better things, anywhere. The words "Too late!" beat in her brain like
the pendulum of a clock, maddeningly insistent.

"If only I had been content to go to him without knowing!" she went on
tonelessly. "But that paragraph in the paper--it frightened me. I felt
that I _must know_ if--if I had been wronging him all the time. And I
had!" she ended wearily. "I had." Then, after a moment: "So you see, I
can't go back to him."

"You--can't--go--back?" The words fell slowly, one by one, from Olga's
lips. "Do you mean that you won't go back now--now that you know he has
never failed you as you thought he had? . . . Oh!"--rapidly--"you can't
mean that. You won't--you can't refuse to go back now."

Diana lifted a grey, drawn face.

"Don't you see," she said monotonously, "it's just because of
that--because he hasn't failed me while I've failed him so utterly--that
I can't go back?"

Olga turned on her swiftly, her green eyes blazing dangerously.

"It's your pride!" she cried fiercely. "It's your damnable pride that's
standing in the way! Merciful heav