“Doesn’t grow younger—yes—I see!” echoed Diana, with an enigmatical smile. “And seven years is a long time for a woman to keep faith with a man under the same circumstances. You have not grown younger!”
He reddened. His personal vanity as “an officer and a gentleman” was far greater than that of any woman.
“If we live, we are bound to grow older——” he said.
“Sometimes,” acquiesced Diana, pleasantly. “It is not always necessary. In my case, for example——”
Looking at the fair and youthful outline of her features, the sense of extreme incongruity between what she actually was and what she resolutely avowed herself to be touched his innermost sense of humour, and he laughed outright.
“Of course you are playing!” he said—“Playing with yourself and me! You must be one of those queer psychists who imagine they are re-embodied spirits of the past—but I don’t mind if that sort of thing really amuses you! Only I wonder you don’t imagine yourself to be the reincarnation of some fairy princess—or even the Diana who was the goddess of the moon, rather than an ordinary spinster of the British middle-class, who, even in her best days, was nothing more than the usual type of pretty English girl.”
“To whom you wrote a good deal of ‘gush’ in your time—” said Diana composedly—“which she was fool enough to believe. Do you remember this letter?”
From a quaint blue velvet bag hanging at her side by a silver chain, she drew a folded paper and handed it to him.
With eyes that grew hot and dim in giddy perplexity, he read his own writing:
“How I love you, my own sweet little Diana! You are to me the most adorable girl in the world, and if ever I do an unkind thing to you or wrong you in any way, may God punish me for a treacherous brute! My one desire in life is to make you happy.”