She had a sudden vision of the slender, lonely child in shabby black as she had first seen her in the shadowy room.
"No, oh, no," she whispered.
"Why not?"
"Because there isn't any honorable way; because I should feel little and mean; because it would make me think less—of you, Anthony."
Her eyes met his steadily. She was as pale as the spectral lilacs, whose perfume floated about them. But her nervous fears were gone. She knew now that they would triumph—she and Anthony—that they were not to leave the heights.
When at last he spoke, it was in a moved voice. "If you were less than you are I should not love you so much. You know that, Diana?"
"Yes, I know——"
"In the years to come, what you have been to me will be my light—in the darkness——"
Unable to speak, she held out her hands to him. He took them, and bent his head.
With a little murmured cry she released herself, and flitted away into the engulfing darkness. The echoes of her swift descent came whispering up the stairs; in the distance a door was shut. The emptiness of the unfinished house seemed symbolic of the future which stretched before him.