towards the doorway, then paused.

"Hugh----"

There was an infinite appeal in her voice. Her eyes were those of a
frightened, bewildered child.

"Go, please," he repeated mechanically.

A convulsive sob tore its way through her throat. She stepped blindly
forward. The next moment the door closed inexorably between husband and
wife.

CHAPTER III

SAINT-MICHAEL AND THE WONDER-CHILD

Day by day her husband's complete estrangement from her was rendered
additionally bitter to Diane by Catherine's complacent air of triumph.
The latter knew that she had won, severed the tie which bound her
brother to "the foreign dancing-woman," and she did not scruple to let
Diane see that she openly rejoiced in the fact.

At first Diane imagined that Catherine might rest content with what she
had accomplished, but the grim, hard-featured woman still continued to
exhibit the same self-righteous disapproval towards her brother's wife
as hitherto.

Diane endured it in resentful silence for a time, but one day, stung by
some more than usually acid speech of Catherine's, she turned on her,
demanding passionately why she seemed to hate her even more since the
birth of the child.

"I nearly gave my life for her," she protested with fierce simplicity.
"I could do no more! Is it because _le bon dieu_ has sent me a little
daughter instead of a little son that you hate me so much?"

And Catherine had answered her in a voice of quiet, concentrated
animosity:

"If you had died then--_died childless_--I should have thanked God day
and night."

Diane, isolated and unhappy, turned to her baby for consolation. It was
all that was left to her out of the wreck of her life, and the very fact
that both Hugh and Catherine seemed to regard the little daughter with
abhorrence only served to strengthen the passionate worship which she
herself lavished upon her.

The child--they had called her Magda--was an odd little creature, as
might have been expected from the violently opposing characteristics of
her parents.

She was slenderly made--built on the same lithe lines as her mother--and
almost as soon as she was able to walk she manifested an amazing balance
and suppleness of limb. By the time she was four years old she was
trying to imitate, with uncertain little feet and dimpled, aimlessly
waving arms, the movements of her mother, when to amuse the child, she
would sometimes dance for her.

However big a tragedy had occurred in Magda's