erial acts by which she sustains a tottering
position are speedily swallowed in the one pervading flame. She sees but
an ashen curl of the path she has traversed to safety, if anything.

Knowing her lover was to come in the morning, Diana's thoughts dwelt
wholly upon the way to tell him, as tenderly as possible without danger
to herself, that her time for entertaining was over until she had
finished her book; indefinitely, therefore. The apprehension of his
complaining pricked the memory that she had something to forgive. He
had sunk her in her own esteem by compelling her to see her woman's
softness. But how high above all other men her experience of him could
place him notwithstanding! He had bowed to the figure of herself, dearer
than herself, that she set before him: and it was a true figure to the
world; a too fictitious to any but the most knightly of lovers. She
forgave; and a shudder seized her.--Snake! she rebuked the delicious
run of fire through her veins; for she was not like the idol women of
imperishable type, who are never for a twinkle the prey of the blood:
statues created by man's common desire to impress upon the sex his
possessing pattern of them as domestic decorations.

When she entered the room to Dacier and they touched hands, she rejoiced
in her coolness, without any other feeling or perception active. Not to
be unkind, not too kind: this was her task. She waited for the passage
of commonplaces.

'You slept well, Percy?'

'Yes; and you?'

'I don't think I even dreamed.'

They sat. She noticed the cloud on him and waited for his allusion to
it, anxious concerning him simply.

Dacier flung the hair off his temples. Words of Titanic formation were
hurling in his head at journals and journalists. He muttered his disgust
of them.

'Is there anything to annoy you in the papers to-day?' she asked, and
thought how handsome his face was in anger.

The paper of Mr. Tonans was named by him. 'You have not seen it?

'I have not opened it yet.'

He sprang up. 'The truth is, those fellows can now afford to buy right
and left, corrupt every soul alive! There must have been a spy at the
keyhole. I'm pretty certain--I could swear it was not breathed to any
ear but mine; and there it is this morning in black and white.'

'What is?' cried Diana, turning to him on her chair.

'The thing I told you last night.'

Her lips worked, as if to spell the thing. 'Printed, do you say?' she
rose.

'Printed.