Then at last he understood, and his arms went round her.
"If I won't take it!" he cried, his voice all shaken with the wonder of it. "Oh, my sweet! I'll take it as a beggar takes a gift, as a blind man sight—on my knees, thanking God for it—and for you."
And so Diana came again into her kingdom, whence she had wandered outcast so many bitter months.
Presently she drew him down beside her on to a big, cushioned divan.
"Max, what a lot of time we've wasted!"
"So much, sweet, that all the rest of life we'll be making up for it."
And he kissed her on the mouth by way of a beginning.
"What will Baroni say?" she whispered, with a covert smile.
"He'll wish he was young, as we are, so that he could love—as we do," he replied triumphantly.
Diana laughed at him for an arrogant lover, then sighed at a memory she knew of.
"I think he has loved—as we do," she chided gently.