"Do you remember I once told you I thought 'The Hell of Memory' would be a more appropriate title? . . . I was quite right."
"Max—" Diana's voice quavered and broke.
A sudden eager light sprang into his face. Swiftly he same to her side and stood looking down at her.
"Diana," he said tensely, "must it always remain—the hell of memory?"
They were very near to each other in that moment; the great wall fashioned of jealousy and distrust was tottering to its foundations.
And then, from the street below came the high-pitched, raucous sound of the newsboy's voice:—
"Attempted Murder of Miss Adrian Jervis! Premier Theatre Besieged."
The words, with their deadly import, cut between husband and wife like a sword.
"Good God!" The exclamation burst from Max with a cry of horror. In an instant he was out of the room, down the stairs, and running bareheaded along the street in pursuit of the newsboy, and a few seconds later he was back with a newspaper, damp from the press, in his hands.
Diana had remained sitting just as he had left her. She felt numbed. The look of dread and consternation that had leaped into her husband's face, as the news came shrilling up from the street below, had told her, more eloquently than any words could do, how absolutely his life was bound up in that of Adrienne de Gervais. A man whose heart's desire has been suddenly snatched from him might look so; no other.