So it was true! Adrienne had gone away and the house was empty and closed.
Diana retraced her steps homeward, conscious of a queer feeling of satisfaction. Often the thought that Max and Adrienne might be together had tortured her almost beyond endurance, adding a keener edge to the pain of separation.
Pain! Life seemed made up of pain these days. Sometimes she wondered how much a single human being was capable of bearing.
It was months—an eternity—since she and Max had parted, and still her heart cried out for him, fighting the bitter anger and distrust that had driven her from him.
She felt she could have borne it more easily had he died. Then the remembrance of his love would still have been hers to hold and keep, something most precious and unspoilt. But now, each memory of their life together was tarnished with doubt and suspicion and mistrust. She had put him to the test, bade him choose betwixt her and Adrienne, claiming his confidence as her right—and he had chosen Adrienne and declined to trust her with his secret.
She told herself that had he loved her, he must have yielded. No man who cared could have refused her, and the scourge of wounded pride drove her into that outer darkness where bitterness and "proper self-respect" defile the face of Love.
She had turned desperately to her work for distraction from the ceaseless torture of her thoughts, but not all the work in the world had been able to silence the cry of her heart.
For work can do no more than fill the day, and though Diana feverishly crammed each day so full that there was little time to think and remember, the nights remained—the interminable nights, when she was alone with her own soul, and when the memories which the day's work had beaten back came pressing in upon her.
Oh, God! The nights—the endless, intolerable nights! . . .