hat
love means! . . . Ah, Max! Max! What am I to do, dear, if you won't
let me go with you? What shall I do with all the love that is in my
heart--if you won't take it?" For a moment she stood there tremulously
smiling, while he stared at her, in his eyes a kind of bewilderment and
unbelief fighting the dawn of an unutterable joy.

Then at last he understood, and his arms went round her.

"If I won't take it!" he cried, his voice all shaken with the wonder of
it. "Oh, my sweet! I'll take it as a beggar takes a gift, as a blind
man sight--on my knees, thanking God for it--and for you."

And so Diana came again into her kingdom, whence she had wandered outcast
so many bitter months.

Presently she drew him down beside her on to a big, cushioned divan.

"Max, what a lot of time we've wasted!"

"So much, sweet, that all the rest of life we'll be making up for it."
And he kissed her on the mouth by way of a beginning.

"What will Baroni say?" she whispered, with a covert smile.

"He'll wish he was young, as we are, so that he could love--as we do," he
replied triumphantly.

Diana laughed at him for an arrogant lover, then sighed at a memory she
knew of.

"I think he _has_ loved--as we do," she chided gently.

Max's arm tightened round her.

"Then he's in need of envy, beloved, for love like ours is the most
wonderful thing life has to give."

They were silent a moment, and then the quick instinct of lovers told
them they were no longer alone.

Baroni stood on the threshold of the room, frowning heavily.

"So!" he exclaimed, grimly addressing Max. "This, then, is how you
travel in haste to Paris?"

Startled, Diana sprang to her feet, and would have drawn herself away,
but Max laughed joyously, and still keeping her hand in his, led her
towards Baroni.

"_We_ travel to Paris to-morrow," he said. "Won't you--wish us luck,
Baroni?"

But luck was the last thing which the old _maestro_ was by way of wishing
them. For long he argued and expostulated upon the madness, as he termed
it, of Diana's renouncing her career, trying his utmost to dissuade her.

"You haf not counted the cost!" he fumed at her. "You cannot haf counted
the cost!"

But Diana only smiled at him.

"Yes, I have. And I'm glad it's going to cost me something--a good deal,
in fact--to go back to Max. Don't you see, _Maestro_, it kind of squares
things the tiniest bit?" She paused, adding, after a moment: "And it's
such a litt