"You won't go back?" Olga spoke slowly, as though she doubted her own hearing.
A faint, derisive smile flickered across Diana's lips. "How could I? Do you suppose that—that having failed him when he asked me to believe in him, I could go back to him now—now that I know everything? . . . Oh, no, I couldn't do that. I've nothing to offer him—now—nothing to give—neither faith nor trust, because I know the whole truth." She spoke with the quiet finality of one who can see no hope, no possibility of better things, anywhere. The words "Too late!" beat in her brain like the pendulum of a clock, maddeningly insistent.
"If only I had been content to go to him without knowing!" she went on tonelessly. "But that paragraph in the paper—it frightened me. I felt that I must know if—if I had been wronging him all the time. And I had!" she ended wearily. "I had." Then, after a moment: "So you see, I can't go back to him."
"You—can't—go—back?" The words fell slowly, one by one, from Olga's lips. "Do you mean that you won't go back now—now that you know he has never failed you as you thought he had? . . . Oh!"—rapidly—"you can't mean that. You won't—you can't refuse to go back now."
Diana lifted a grey, drawn face.
"Don't you see," she said monotonously, "it's just because of that—because he hasn't failed me while I've failed him so utterly—that I can't go back?"
Olga turned on her swiftly, her green eyes blazing dangerously.
"It's your pride!" she cried fiercely. "It's your damnable pride that's standing in the way! Merciful heavens! Did you ever love him, I wonder, that you're too proud to ask his forgiveness now—now when you know what you've done?"
Diana's lips moved in a pitiful attempt at a smile.
"Oh, no," she said, shaking her head. "It's not that. I've . . . no pride . . . left, I think. But I can't be mean—mean enough to crawl back now." She paused, then went on with an inflection of irony in her low, broken voice. "'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' . . . Well, I'm reaping—that's all."