"There can be little in common between a mere quill-driver and--a _prima donna_."

She turned on him swiftly.

"You seem to forget that at present you are a famous dramatist, while I am merely a musical student."

"You divested yourself of that t.i.tle for ever this evening," he returned, "It was no 'student' who sang 'The Haven of Memory.'"

"All the same I shall have to study for a long time yet, Baroni tells me,"--smiling a little.

"In that sense a great artiste is always a student. But what I meant by saying that a mere writer has no place in a prima donna's life was that, whereas my work is more or less a hobby, and my little bit of 'fame'--as you choose to call it--merely a side-issue, _your_ work will be your whole existence. You will live for it entirely--your art and the world's recognition of it will absorb every thought. There will be no room in your life for the friendship of insignificant people like myself."

"Try me," she said demurely.

He swung round on her with a sudden fierceness.

"By G.o.d!" he exclaimed. "If you knew the temptation . . . if you knew how I long to take what you offer!"

She smiled at him--a slow, sweet smile that curved her mouth, and climbing to her eyes lit them with a soft radiance.

"Well?" she said quietly. "Why not?"

He got up abruptly, and going to the window, stood with his back to her, looking out into the night.

She watched him consideringly. Intuitively she knew that he was fighting a battle with himself. She had always been conscious of the element of friction in their intercourse. This evening it had suddenly crystallised into a definite realisation that although this man desired to be her friend--Truth, at the bottom of her mental well, whispered perhaps even something more--he was caught back, restrained by the knowledge of some obstacle, some hindrance to their friendship of which she was entirely ignorant.

She waited in silence.

Presently he turned back to her, and she gathered from his expression that he had come to a decision. In the moment that elapsed before he spoke she had time to be aware of a sudden, almost breathless anxiety, and instinctively she let her lids fall over her eyes lest he should read and understand the apprehension in them.

"Diana."

His voice came gently and gravely to her ears. With an effort she looked up and found him regarding her with eyes from which all the old ironical mockery had fled. They were very steady and kind--kinder than she had ever believed it possible for them to be. Her throat contracted painfully, and she stretched out her hand quickly, pleadingly, like a child.

He took it between both his, holding it with the delicate care one accords a flower, as though fearful of hurting it.

"Diana, I'm going to accept--what you offer me. Heaven knows I've little right to! There are . . . worlds between you, and me. . . .

But if a man dying of thirst in the desert finds a pool--a pool of crystal water--is he to be blamed if he drinks--if he quenches his thirst for a moment? He knows the pool is not his--never can he his.

And when the rightful owner comes along--why, he'll go away, back to the loneliness of the desert again. But he'll always remember that his lips have once drunk from the pool--and been refreshed."

Diana spoke very low and wistfully.

"He--he must go back to the desert?"

Errington bent his head.

"He must go back," he answered. "The G.o.ds have decreed him outcast from life's pleasant places; he is ordained to wander alone--always."

Diana drew her hand suddenly away from his, and the hasty movement knocked over the little silver salt-cellar on the table, scattering the salt on the cloth between them.

"Oh!" she cried, flushing with distress. "I've spilled the salt between us--we shall quarrel."

The electricity in the atmosphere was gone, and Errington laughed gaily.

"I'm not afraid. See,"--he filled their gla.s.ses with wine--"let's drink to our compact of friendship."

He raised his gla.s.s, clinking it gently against hers, and they drank.

But as Diana replaced her gla.s.s on the table, she looked once more in a troubled way at the little heap of salt that lay on the white cloth.

"I wish I hadn't spilled it," she said uncertainly. "It's an ill omen.

Some day we shall quarrel."

Her eyes were grave and brooding, as though some prescience of evil weighed upon her.

Errington lifted his gla.s.s, smiling.

"Far be the day," he said lightly.

But her eyes, meeting his, were still clouded with foreboding.

[1] This song, "The Haven of Memory," has been set to music by Isador Epstein: published by G. Ricordi & Co., 265 Regent Street, W.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FRIEND WHO STOOD BY

As the day fixed for her recital approached, Diana became a prey to intermittent attacks of nerves.

"Supposing I should fail?" she would sometimes exclaim, in a sudden spasm of despair.

Then Baroni would reply quite contentedly:--

"My dear Mees Quentin, you will not fail. G.o.d has given you the instrument, and I, Baroni, I haf taught you how to use it. _Gran Dio_!

Fail!" This last accompanied by a snort of contempt.

Or it might be Olga Lermontof to whom Diana would confide her fears.

She, equally with the old _maestro_, derided the possibility of failure, and there was something about her cool a.s.surance of success that always sufficed to steady Diana's nerves, at least for the time being.

"As I have you to accompany me," Diana told her one day, when she was ridiculing the idea of failure, "I may perhaps get through all right.

I simply _lean_ on you when I'm singing. I feel like a boat floating on deep water--almost as though I couldn't sink."

"Well, you can't." Miss Lermontof spoke with conviction. "I shan't break down--I could play everything you sing blindfold!--and your voice is . . . Oh, well"--hastily--"I can't talk about your voice. But I believe I could forgive you anything in the world when you sing."

Diana stared at her in surprise. She had no idea that Olga was particularly affected by her singing.

"It's rather absurd, isn't it?" continued the Russian, a mocking light in her eyes that somehow reminded Diana of Max Errington. "But there it is. A little triangular box in your throat and a breath of air from your lungs--and immediately you hold one's heart in your hands!"