"I should have thought they were obvious. Our marriage has been a mistake. It's a failure. And I can't bear this life any longer. . . . I must have something to do."
CHAPTER XXI
THE OTHER WOMAN
Carlo Baroni's joy knew no bounds when he understood that Diana had definitely decided to return to the concert platform. His first action was to order her away for a complete change and rest, so she and Joan obediently packed their trunks and departed to Switzerland, where they forgot for a time the existence of such things as London fogs, either real or figurative, and threw themselves heart and soul into the winter sports that were going forward.
The middle of February found them once more in England, and Joan rejoined her father, while Diana went back to Lilac Lodge. She was greatly relieved to discover that the break had simplified several problems and made it much easier for her to meet her husband and begin life again on fresh terms. Max, indeed, seemed to have accepted the new régime with that same mocking philosophy with which he invariably faced the problems of life—and which so successfully cloaked his hurt from prying eyes.
He was uniformly kind in his manner to his wife—with that light, half-cynical kindness which he had accorded her in the train on their first memorable journey together, and which effectually set them as far apart from each other as though they stood at the opposite ends of the earth.
Unreasonably enough, Diana bitterly resented this attitude. Womanlike, she made more than one attempt to re-open the matter over which they had quarrelled, but each was skilfully turned aside, and the fact that after his one rejected effort at reconciliation, Max had calmly accepted the new order of things, added fuel to the jealous fire that burned within her. She told herself that if he still cared for her, if he were not utterly absorbed in Adrienne de Gervais, he would never have rested until he had restored the old, happy relations between them.
Instinctively she sought to dull the pain at her heart by plunging headlong into professional life. Her voice, thanks to the rest and change of her visit to Switzerland, had regained all its former beauty, and her return to the concert platform was received with an outburst of popular enthusiasm. The newspapers devoted half a column apiece to the subject, and several of them prophesied that it was in grand opera that Madame Diana Quentin would eventually find the setting best suited to her gifts.
"Mere concert work"—wrote one critic—"will never give her the scope which both her temperament and her marvellous voice demand."
And with this opinion Baroni cordially concurred. It was his ultimate ambition for Diana that she should study for grand opera, and she herself, only too thankful to find something that would occupy her thoughts and take her right out of herself, as it were, enabling her to forget the overthrow of her happiness, flung herself into the work with enthusiasm.