"Oh, I've thought these things all out, and I know that I could never be happy, Sophie, if my happiness were founded on the hurt heart of that child. And so—I am going away—and let things go back to where they would have been if I had never come——"
"Do you think they can—ever go back, Diana?"
Diana, remembering Anthony's face in the moonlight, hesitated, then she said, bravely, "I shall not ask myself that question, Sophie. I shall simply do the thing which will seem right to me, and I am sure it is right for me to go away."
"And Bettina?"
"She must stay here with you until she is married. You won't mind, will you? There will be plenty of things to do. You can help with her wedding outfit. And after they are—married, you and I will go back—to Berlin. No, we won't, Sophie. We'll go to the desert, and down the Nile, and we'll go to Japan, and see Fujiyama; and we'll visit the temples in China, and we'll find out from some of those old Buddhists how they acquire—peace——"
"We will go to the ends of the earth if you wish—but there's only one place that I shall ask you to take me, Diana."
"Where, dear heart?"
"To that quiet spot over there in Germany, where the big cross stands up against the sky——"
"Sophie—of course you shall go there, dear."
Mrs. Martens knelt by the bed. "I've been thinking of my lover, too, while you've been away. We have each lost the man who made the world a wonderful place—henceforth you and I must live among the shadows—but because we have each other, it shall not be quite so hard."