_"Action is transitory--a step, a blow,
The motion of a muscle--this way or that--
'Tis done, and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed:
Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark,
And shares the nature of infinity_."
--THE BORDERERS.

The Testing of Diana Mallory

CHAPTER I

The clock in the tower of the village church had just struck the
quarter. In the southeast a pale dawn light was beginning to show above
the curving hollow of the down wherein the village lay enfolded; but the
face of the down itself was still in darkness. Farther to the south, in
a stretch of clear night sky hardly touched by the mounting dawn, Venus
shone enthroned, so large and brilliant, so near to earth and the
spectator, that she held, she pervaded the whole dusky scene, the
shadowed fields and wintry woods, as though she were their very soul
and voice.

"The Star of Bethlehem!--and Christmas Day!"

Diana Mallory had just drawn back the curtain of her bedroom. Her voice,
as she murmured the words, was full of a joyous delight; eagerness and
yearning expressed themselves in her bending attitude, her parted lips
and eyes intent upon the star.

The panelled room behind her was dimly lit by a solitary candle, just
kindled. The faint dawn in front, the flickering candle-light behind,
illumined Diana's tall figure, wrapped in a white dressing-gown, her
small head and slender neck, the tumbling masses of her dark hair, and
the hand holding the curtain. It was a kind and poetic light; but her
youth and grace needed no softening.

After the striking of the quarter, the church bell began to ring, with a
gentle, yet insistent note which gradually filled the hollows of the
village, and echoed along the side of the down. Once or twice the sound
was effaced by the rush and roar of a distant train; and once the call
of an owl from a wood, a call melancholy and prolonged, was raised as
though in rivalry. But the bell held Diana's strained ear throughout its
course, till its mild clangor passed into the deeper note of the clock
striking the hour, and then all sounds alike died into a profound yet
listening silence.

"Eight o'clock! That was for early service," she thought; and there
flashed into her mind an image of the old parish church, dimly lit for
the Christmas Eucharist, its walls and pillars decorated with ivy and
holly, yet austere and cold through all its adorni