"No. I don't know how it will end, as you say. But surely there will come a time when I shall be free to live my own life?"
Adrienne smiled a trifle wistfully.
"If your conscience ever lets you," she said.
There was a long silence. Presently she resumed:—-
"I never thought, when you first told me about your engagement, that the position of affairs need make any difference. I was so pleased to think that you cared for each other! And now—where will it all end? How many lives are going to be darkened by the same shadow? Oh, it's terrible, Max, terrible!"
The tears filled her eyes.
"Don't!" said Max unsteadily. "Don't! I know it's bad enough. Perhaps you're right—I oughtn't to have spoken to Diana, I hoped things would right themselves eventually, but you and Baroni have put another complexion upon matters. It's all an inextricable tangle, whichever way one looks at it—come good luck or bad! . . . I suppose I was wrong—I ought to have waited. But now . . . now . . . Before God, Adrienne! I can't, give her up—not now!"
CHAPTER XVII
"WHOM GOD HATH JOINED TOGETHER"
Max and Diana were married shortly before the following Christmas. The wedding took place very quietly at Crailing, only a few intimate friends being asked to it. For, as Max pointed out, either their invitations must be limited to a dozen or so, or else Diana must resign herself to a fashionable wedding in town, with all the world and his wife as guests at the subsequent reception. No middle course is possible when a well-known dramatist elects to marry the latest sensation in the musical world!