"And—and I thought we were so happy," she sobbed. "Now it's all spoiled and broken. And you've spoilt it!"
"Don't!" he said unsteadily. "Don't cry like that. I can't stand it."
He made an instinctive movement to take her in his arms, but she slipped aside, turning on him in sudden, passionate reproach.
"Why did you try and make me love you when you knew . . . all this? I was quite happy before you came—oh, so happy!"—with a sudden yearning recollection of the days of unawakened girlhood. "If—if you had let me alone, I should have been happy still."
The unthinking selfishness of youth rang in her voice, asserting its infinite demand for the joy and pleasure of life.
"And I?" he said, very low. "Does my unhappiness count for nothing?
I'm paying too. God knows, I wish we had never met."
Never to have met! Not to have known all that those months of friendship and a single hour of love had held! The words brought a sudden awakening to Diana—a new, wonderful knowledge that, cost what they might in bitterness and future pain, she would rather bear the cost than know her life emptied of those memories.
She had ceased crying. After a few moments she spoke with a gentle, wistful composure.
"I was wrong, Max. You're not to blame—you couldn't help it any more than I could."
"I might have gone away—kept away from you," he said tonelessly.