She shrank from meeting him again as a wounded man shrinks from an accidental touch upon his hurt. It had been easy enough, in the first intolerant pa.s.sion which had overwhelmed her, to contemplate life apart from him. Indeed, to leave him had seemed the only obvious course to save her from the daily flagellation of her love, the hourly insult to her dignity, that his relations with Adrienne de Gervais and the whole mystery which hung about his actions had engendered.

But when once the cord had been cut, and life in its actuality had to be faced apart from him, Diana found that love, hurt and buffeted though it may be, still remains love, a thing of flame and fire, its very essence a desire for the loved one's presence.

Every fibre of her being cried aloud for Max, and there were times when the longing for the warm, human touch of his hand, for the sound of his voice, grew almost unbearable. Yet any meeting between them could be but a barren reminder of the past, revitalising the dull ache of longing into a quick and overmastering agony, and, realising this, Diana recoiled from the possibility with a fear almost bordering upon panic.

She achieved a certain feeling of security in the fact that she had made her home with Baroni and his sister. Signora Evanci mothered her and petted her and fussed over her, much as she did over Baroni himself, and the old _maestro_, aware of the tangle of Diana's matrimonial affairs, and ambitious for her artistic future, was likely to do his utmost to avert a meeting between husband and wife--since emotional crises are apt to impair the voice.

From Baroni's point of view, the happenings of life were chiefly of importance in so far as they tended towards the perfecting of the artiste.

"Love is good," he had said on one occasion. "No one can interpret romantic music who has not loved. And a broken heart in the past, and plenty of good food in the present--these may very well make a great artiste. But a heart that _keeps on_ breaking, that is not permitted to heal itself--no, that is not good. _A la fin_, the voice breaks also."

Hence he regarded his favourite pupil with considerable anxiety. To his experienced eye it was palpable that the happenings of her married life had tried Diana's strength almost to breaking point, and that the enthusiasm and energy with which, seeking an anodyne to pain, she had flung herself into her work, would act either one way or the other--would either finish the job, so that the frayed nerves gave way, culminating in a serious breakdown of her health, or so fill her horizon that the memories of the past gradually receded into insignificance.

The cup of fame, newly held to her lips, could not but prove an intoxicating draught. There was a rushing excitement, an exhilaration about her life as a well-known public singer, which acted as a constant stimulus. The enthusiastic acclamations with which she was everywhere received, the adulation that invariably surrounded her, and the intense joy which, as a genuine artist, she derived from the work itself, all acted as a narcotic to the pain of memory, and out of these she tried to build up a new life for herself, a life in which love should have neither part nor lot, but wherein added fame and recognition was to be the ultimate goal.

Her singing had improved; there was a new depth of feeling in her interpretation which her own pain and suffering had taught her, and it was no infrequent thing for part of her audience to be moved to tears, wistfully reminded of some long-dead romance, when she sang "The Haven of Memory"--a song which came to be a.s.sociated with her name much in the same way that "Home, Sweet Home" was a.s.sociated with another great singer, whose golden voice gave new meaning to the familiar words.

Olga Lermontof still remained her accompanist. For some unfathomed reason she no longer flung out the bitter gibes and thrusts at Errington which had formerly sprung so readily to her lips, and Diana grimly ascribed this forbearance to an odd kind of delicacy--the generosity of the victor who refuses to triumph openly over the vanquished!

Once, in a bitter mood, Diana had taxed her with it.

"You must feel satisfied now that you have achieved your object," she told her.

The Russian, idly improvising on the piano, dropped her hands from the keys, and her eyes held a queer kind of pain in them as she made answer.

"And what exactly did you think my object was?" she queried.

"Surely it was obvious?" replied Diana lightly. "When Max and I were together, you never ceased to sow discord between us--though why you hated him so, I cannot tell--and now that we have separated, I suppose you are content."

"Content?" Olga laughed shortly. "I never wanted you to separate.

And"--she hesitated--"I never hated Max Errington."

"I don't believe it!" The a.s.sertion leaped involuntarily from Diana's lips.

"I can understand that," Olga spoke with a curious kind of patience.

"But, believe it or not as you will, I was working for quite other ends. And I've failed," she added dispiritedly.

With the opening of the autumn season and the ensuing rebirth of musical and theatrical life, London received an unexpected shock. It was announced that Adrienne de Gervais was retiring from her position as leading lady at the Premier Theatre, and for a few days after the launching of this thunderbolt the theatre-going world hummed with the startling news, while a dozen rumours were set on foot to account for what must surely prove little less than a disaster to the management of the Premier.

But, as usual, after the first buzz of surprise and excitement had spent itself, people settled down, and reluctantly accepted the official explanation furnished by the newspapers--namely, that the popular actress had suffered considerably in health from the strain of several successive heavy seasons and intended to winter abroad.

To Diana the news yielded an odd sense of comfort. Somehow the thought of Adrienne's absence from England seemed to bring Max nearer, to make him more her own again. Even though they were separated, there was a certain consolation in the knowledge that the woman whose close friendship with her husband had helped to make shipwreck of their happiness was going out of his life, though it might be only for a little time.

One day, impelled by an irresistible desire to test the truth of the newspaper reports, Diana took her way to Somervell Street, pausing opposite the house that had been Adrienne's. She found it invested with a curious air of unfamiliarity, facing the street with blank and shuttered windows, like blind eyes staring back at her unrecognisingly.

So it was true! Adrienne had gone away and the house was empty and closed.

Diana retraced her steps homeward, conscious of a queer feeling of satisfaction. Often the thought that Max and Adrienne might be together had tortured her almost beyond endurance, adding a keener edge to the pain of separation.

Pain! Life seemed made up of pain these days. Sometimes she wondered how much a single human being was capable of bearing.

It was months--an eternity--since she and Max had parted, and still her heart cried out for him, fighting the bitter anger and distrust that had driven her from him.

She felt she could have borne it more easily had he died. Then the remembrance of his love would still have been hers to hold and keep, something most precious and unspoilt. But now, each memory of their life together was tarnished with doubt and suspicion and mistrust. She had put him to the test, bade him choose betwixt her and Adrienne, claiming his confidence as her right--and he had chosen Adrienne and declined to trust her with his secret.

She told herself that had he loved her, he must have yielded. No man who cared could have refused her, and the scourge of wounded pride drove her into that outer darkness where bitterness and "proper self-respect" defile the face of Love.

She had turned desperately to her work for distraction from the ceaseless torture of her thoughts, but not all the work in the world had been able to silence the cry of her heart.

For work can do no more than fill the day, and though Diana feverishly crammed each day so full that there was little time to think and remember, the nights remained--the interminable nights, when she was alone with her own soul, and when the memories which the day's work had beaten back came pressing in upon her.

Oh, G.o.d! The nights--the endless, intolerable nights! . . .

CHAPTER XXIV

THE VISION OF LOVE

A week after her visit to Somervell Street, the thing which Diana had dreaded came to pa.s.s.

She was attending a reception at the French Emba.s.sy, and as she made her way through the crowded rooms, followed by Olga Lermontof--who frequently added to the duties of accompanist those of _dame de compagnie_ to the great _prima donna_--she came suddenly face to face with Max.

To many of us the antic.i.p.ation of an unpleasant happening is far more agonising than the actual thing itself. The mind, brooding apprehensively upon what may conceivably occur, exaggerates the possibilities of the situation, enhancing all the disagreeable details, and oblivious of any mitigating circ.u.mstances which may, quite probably, accompany it. There is sound sense and infinite comfort, if you look for it, in the old saying which bids us not to cross our bridges till we come to them.

The fear of the unknown, the unexperienced, is a more haunting, insidious fear than any other, and sometimes one positively longs to hasten the advent of an unwelcome ordeal, in order that the worst may be known and the menace of the future be transformed into a memory of the past.

So it was with Diana. She had been for so long beset by her fear of the first meeting that she experienced a sensation almost of relief when her eyes fell at last upon the tall figure of her husband.

He was deep in conversation with the French Amba.s.sador at the moment, but as Diana approached it was as though some sensitive, invisible live wire had vibrated, apprising him of her nearness, and he looked up suddenly, his blue eyes gazing straight into hers.

To Diana, the brief encounter proved amazingly simple and easy in contrast with the shrinking apprehensions she had formed. A slight bow from her, its grave return from him, and the dreaded moment was past.

It was only afterwards that she realised, with a sense of sick dismay, how terribly he had altered. She caught at the accompanist's arm with nervous force.

"Olga!" she whispered. "Did you see?"

The Russian's expression answered her. Her face wore a curious stunned look, and her mouth twitched as she tried to control the sudden trembling of her lips.

"Come outside--on to this balcony." Olga spoke with a fierce imperativeness as she saw Diana sway uncertainly and her face whiten.

Once outside in the cool shelter of the balcony, dimly lit by swaying Chinese lanterns, Diana sank into a chair, shaken and unnerved. For an instant her eyes strayed back to where, through the open French window, she could see Max still conversing with the Amba.s.sador, but she averted them swiftly.

The change in him hurt her like the sudden stab of a knife. His face was worn and lined; there was something ascetic-looking in the hollowed line from cheek-bone to chin and in the stern, austere closing of the lips, while the eyes--the mocking blue eyes with the laughter always lurking at the back of them--held an expression of deep, unalterable sadness.

"Olga!" The word broke from Diana's white lips like a cry of appeal, tremulous and uncertain.

But Miss Lermontof made no response. She seemed quite unmoved by the distress of the woman sitting huddled in the chair before her, and her light green eyes shone with a curious savage glint like the eyes of a cat.