"I am beginning to be afraid of her—this Africa of yours!"
"No need for you to be afraid anywhere," he smiled. "There will always be those who will stand between you and fear."
"How little you know!" she said abruptly. "I haven't a friend in the world."
There was a short silence, and they looked straight at each other, the slim, tall girl in her diaphanous tulles, the powerful, innocent-eyed man.
"You must be joking," he began. Then he saw the trouble in her eyes and her quivering mouth.
"But even in jest, never say that, while I am in the world," he added gently. She was so grateful for the chivalrous words that she dared not speak for fear the tears should rush out of her eyes. Impulsively she put out her hand, and his brown, firm one closed on it, and held it very close. Then he carried it to his lips. She heard him say one word, very softly: "Diana."
At that she tore her hand from his and sped away swiftly into the darkness. Once in her cabin she locked the door, turned out the lights, and flung herself on to the bed. For a long time she lay there, a rumpled heap of tulle and misery, weeping because life was a cruel brute who kept her gifts for the rich and wellborn or the old and indifferent, mockingly withholding from those who were young and eager and could better appreciate them.
"What is the use of youth and good looks when one is poor and lonely?" she sobbed. "They only mock one! It is like having a Paris hat put on your head while your feet are bare and bleeding and your stomach is empty."
She wished she had never begun this miserable game of Diana Vernilands, never tasted the power of rank and place, the joy of jewels and pretty clothes. She wished she had never left England, never seen Vereker Sarle, and, above all, she wished she were dead.
It was about two in the morning before she had finished wishing and sobbing. Youth began to assert itself then, and she thought of what a sight would be in the morning, with tangled hair and swollen eyes. Languidly at last she rose. The tulle dress was ruined, but little she recked. Rather she felt a fierce satisfaction in the thought that it was done for, and Diana could never wear it.