CHAPTER XVIII

THE APPROACHING SHADOW

Diana gathered up her songs and slowly dropped them into her music-case, while Baroni stared at her with a puzzled, brooding look in his eyes.

At last he spoke:--

"You are throwing away the great gift G.o.d has given you. First, you will take no more engagements, and now--what is it? Where is your voice?"

Diana, conscious of having done herself less than justice at the lesson which was just concluded, shook her head.

"I don't know," she said simply. "I don't seem able to sing now, somehow."

Baroni shrugged his shoulders.

"You are fretting," he declared. "And so the voice suffers."

"Fretting? I don't know that I've anything to fret about"--vaguely.

"Only I shall be glad when 'Mrs. Fleming's Husband' is actually produced. Just now"--with a rather wistful smile--"I don't seem to have a husband to call my own. Miss de Gervais claims so much of his time."

Baroni's brow grew stormy.

"Mees de Gervais? Of course! It is inevitable!" he muttered. "I knew it must be like that."

Diana regarded him curiously.

"But why? Do--do all dramatists have to consult so much with the leading actress in the play?"

The old _maestro_ made a sweeping gesture with his arm, as though disavowing any knowledge of the matter.

"Do not ask me!" he said bitterly. "Ask Max Errington--ask your husband these questions."

At the condemnation in his voice her loyalty a.s.serted itself indignantly.

"You are right," she said quickly. "I ought not to have asked you.

Good-bye, signor."

But Diana's loyalty was hard put to it to fight the newly awakened jealousy that was stirring in her heart, and it seemed as though just now everything and everybody combined to add fuel to the fire, for, only a few days later, when Miss Lermontof came to Lilac Lodge to practise with Diana, she, too, added her quota of disturbing comment.

"You're looking very pale," she remarked, at the end of the hour. "And you're shockingly out of voice! What's the matter?"

Then, as Diana made no answer, she added teasingly: "Matrimony doesn't seem to have agreed with you too well. Doesn't Max play the devoted husband satisfactorily?"

Diana flushed.

"You've no right to talk like that, Olga, even in jest," she said, with a little touch of matronly dignity that sat rather quaintly and sweetly upon her. "I know you don't like Max--never have liked him--but please recollect that you're speaking of my husband."

"You misunderstand me," replied the Russian, coolly, as she drew on her gloves. "I _don't_ dislike him; but I do think he ought to be perfectly frank with you. As you say, he is your husband"--pointedly.

"Perfectly frank with me?"

Miss Lermontof nodded.

"Yes."

"He has been," affirmed Diana.

"Has he, indeed? Have you ever asked him"--she paused significantly--"who he is?"

"_Who he is_?" Diana felt her heart contract. What new mystery was this at which the other was hinting?

"_Who he is_?" she repeated. "Why--why--what do you mean?"

The accompanists queer green eyes narrowed between their heavy lids.

"Ask him--that's all," she replied shortly.

She drew her furs around her shoulders preparatory to departure, but Diana stepped in front of her, laying a detaining hand on her arm.

"What do you mean?" she demanded hotly. "Are you implying now that Max is going about under a false name? I hate your hints! Always, always you've tried to insinuate something against Max. . . . No!"--as the Russian endeavoured to free herself from her clasp--"No! You shan't leave this house till you've answered my question. You've made an accusation, and you shall prove it--if I have to bring you face to face with Max himself!"

"I've made no accusation--merely a suggestion that you should ask him who he is. And as to bringing me face to face with him--I can a.s.sure you"--there was an inflection of ironical amus.e.m.e.nt in her light tones--"no one would be less anxious for such a _denouement_ than Max Errington himself. Now, good-bye; think over what I've said. And remember"--mockingly--"Adrienne de Gervais is a bad friend for the man one loves!"

She flitted through the doorway, and Diana was left to deal as best she might with the innuendo contained in her speech.

"_Adrienne de Gervais is a bad friend for the man one loves._"

The phrase seemed to crystallise in words the whole vague trouble that had been knocking at her heart, and she realised suddenly, with a shock of unbearable dismay, that she was _jealous--jealous of Adrienne_!

Hitherto, she had not in the least understood the feeling of depression and _malaise_ which had a.s.sailed her. She had only known that she felt restless and discontented when Max was out of her sight, irritated at the amount of his time which Miss de Gervais claimed, and she had ascribed these things to the depth of her love for him! But now, with a sudden flash of insight, engendered by the Russian's dexterous suggestion, she realised that it was jealousy, sheer primitive jealousy of another woman that had gripped her, and her young, wholesome, spontaneous nature recoiled in horrified self-contempt at the realisation.

Pobs' good counsel came back to her mind: "It seems to me that if you love him, you needs _must_ trust him." Ah! but that was uttered in regard to another matter--the secret which shadowed Max's life--and she _had_ trusted him over that, she told herself. This, this jealousy of another woman, was an altogether different thing, something which had crept insidiously into her heart, and woven its toils about her almost before she was aware of it.

And behind it all there loomed a new terror. Olga Lermontof's advice: "_Ask him who he is_," beat at the back of her brain, fraught with fresh mystery, the forerunner of a whole host of new suspicions.

Secrecy and concealment of any kind were utterly alien to Diana's nature. Impulsive, warm-hearted, quick-tempered, she was the last woman in the world to have been thrust by an unkind fate into an atmosphere of intrigue and mystery. She was like a pretty, fluttering, summer moth, caught in the gossamer web of a spider--terrified, struggling, battling against something she did not understand, and utterly without the patience and strong determination requisite to free herself.

For hours after Olga's departure she fought down the temptation to follow her advice and question her husband. She could not bring herself to hurt him--as it must do if he guessed that she distrusted him. But neither could she conquer the suspicions that had leaped to life within her. At last, for the time being, love obtained the mastery--won the first round of the struggle.

"I will trust him," she told herself. "And--and whether I trust him or not," she ended up defiantly, "at least he shall never know, never see it, if--if I can't."

So that it was a very sweet and repentant, if rather wan, Diana that greeted her husband when he returned from the afternoon rehearsal at the theatre.

Max's keen eyes swept the white, shadowed face.

"Has Miss Lermontof been here to-day?" he asked abruptly.

"Yes." A burning flush chased away her pallor as she answered his question.

"I see."