"Beloved," he said, and now there was no pa.s.sion, no fierceness of desire in his voice, only unutterable tenderness. "Beloved, please G.o.d you will find it in your heart to be good to me. All my thoughts are yours, but for that one thing over which I need your faith. . . . I think no man ever loved a woman so utterly as I love you. And oh!

little white English rose of my heart, I'd never ask more than you could give. Love isn't all pa.s.sion. It's tenderness and shielding and service, dear, as well as fire and flame. A man loves his wife in all the little ways of daily life as well as in the big ways of eternity."

He stooped his head, and a shaft of sunlight flickered across his bright hair. Diana watched it with a curious sense of detachment.

Very gently he laid her hands against his lips, and the next moment he was swinging away from her across the stretch of yellow sand, leaving her alone once more with the sea and the sky and the wheeling gulls.

CHAPTER XV

DIANA'S DECISION

Max had been gone a week--a week of distress and miserable indecision for Diana, racked as she was between her love and her conviction that marriage under the only circ.u.mstances possible would inevitably bring unhappiness. Over and above this fear there was the instinctive recoil she felt from Errington's demand for such blind faith. Her pride rebelled against it. If he loved her and had confidence in her, why couldn't he trust her with his secret? It was treating her like a child, and it would be wrong--all wrong--she argued, to begin their married life with concealment and secrecy for its foundation.

One morning she even wrote to him, telling him definitely either that he must trust her altogether, or that they must part irrevocably. But the letter was torn up the same afternoon, and Diana went to bed that night with her decision still untaken.

For several nights she had slept but little, and once again she pa.s.sed long hours tossing feverishly from side to side of the bed or pacing up and down her room, love and pride fighting a stubborn battle within her. Had Max remained at Crailing, love would have gained an easy victory, but, true to his promise, he had gone away, leaving her to make her decision free and untrammelled by his influence.

Diana's face was beginning to show signs of the mental struggle through which she was pa.s.sing. Dark shadows lay beneath her eyes, and her cheeks, even in so short a time, had hollowed a little. She was irritable, too, and unlike herself, and at last Stair, whose watchful eyes had noted all these things, though he had refrained from comment, taxed her with keeping him outside her confidence.

"Can't I help, Di?" he asked, laying his hand on her shoulder, and twisting her round so that she faced him.

The quick colour flew into her cheeks. For a moment she hesitated, while Stair, releasing his hold of her, dropped into a chair and busied himself filling and lighting his pipe.

"Well?" he queried at last, smiling whimsically. "Won't you give me an old friend's right to ask impertinent questions?"

Impulsively she yielded.

"You needn't, Pobs. I'll tell you all about it."

When she had finished, a long silence ensued. Not that Stair was in any doubt as to what form his advice should take--idealist that he was, there did not seem to him to be any question in the matter. He only hesitated as to how he could best word his counsel.

At last he spoke, very gently, his eyes lit with that inner radiance which gave such an arresting charm of expression to his face.

"My dear," he said, "it seems to me that if you love him you needs _must_ trust him. 'Perfect love casteth out fear.'"

Diana shook her head.

"Mightn't you reverse that, Pobs, and say that he would trust _me_--if he loves me?"

"No, not necessarily." Alan sucked at his pipe. "He knows what his secret is, and whether it is right or wrong for you to share it. You haven't that knowledge. And that's where your trust must come in. You have to believe in him enough to leave it to him to decide whether you ought to be told or not. Have you no confidence in his judgment?"

"I don't think husbands and wives should have secrets from one another," protested Diana obstinately.

"Does he propose to have any other than this one?"

"No."

"Then I don't see that you need complain. The present and the future are yours, but you've no right to demand the past as well. And this secret, whatever it may be, belongs to the past."

"As far as I can see it will be cropping up in the future as well,"

said Diana ruefully. "It seems to be a 'continued in our next' kind of mystery."

Stair laughed boyishly.

"It should add a zest to life if that's the case," he retorted.

Diana was silent a moment. Then she said suddenly:--

"Pobs, what am I to do?"

Instantly Stair became grave again.

"My dear, do you love him?"

Diana nodded, her eyes replying.

"Then nothing else matters a straw. If you love him enough to trust him with the whole of the rest of your life, you can surely trust him over a twopenny-halfpenny little secret which, after all, has nothing in the world to do with you. If you can't, do you know what it looks like?"

She regarded him questioningly.

"It looks as though you suspected the secret of being a disgraceful one--something of which Max is ashamed to tell you. Do you"--sharply--"think that?"

"Of course I don't!" she burst out indignantly.

"Then why trouble? Possibly the matter concerns some one else besides himself, and he may not be at liberty to tell you anything--he might have a dozen different reasons for keeping his own counsel. And the woman who loves him and is ready to be his wife is the first to doubt and, distrust him! Diana, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. If my wife"--his voice shook a little---"had ever doubted me--no matter how black things might have looked against me--I think it would have broken my heart."

Diana's head drooped lower and lower as he spoke, and presently her hand stole out, seeking his. In a moment it was taken and held in a close and kindly clasp.

"I'll--I'll marry him, Pobs," she whispered.

So it came about that when, two days later, Max took his way to 24 Brutton Square, the G.o.ds had better gifts in store for him than he had dared to hope.

He was pacing restlessly up and down her little sitting-room when she entered it, and she could see that his face bore traces of the last few days' anxiety. There were new lines about his mouth, and his eyes were so darkly shadowed as to seem almost sunken in their sockets.

"You have come back!" he said, stepping eagerly towards her.

"Diana"--there was a note of strain in his voice--"which is it?

Yes--or no?"

She held out her hands.

"It's--it's 'yes,' Max."

A stifled exclamation broke from him, almost like a sob. He folded her in his arms and laid his lips to hers.

"My beloved! . . . Oh, Diana, if you could guess the agony--the torture of the last ten days!" And he leaned his cheek against her hair, and stood silently for a little s.p.a.ce.

Presently fear overcame him again--quick fear lest she should ever regret having given herself to him.