THE YOUNG DIANA

MARIE CORELLI

THE YOUNG DIANA
AN EXPERIMENT OF THE FUTURE

BY
MARIE CORELLI

AUTHOR OF “THE LIFE EVERLASTING,” “INNOCENT,” “ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS,” “BARABBAS,” ETC.

TORONTO
WILLIAM BRIGGS

Copyright, Canada, 1918,
By Marie Corelli

THE YOUNG DIANA

THE YOUNG DIANA

CHAPTER I

Once upon a time, in earlier and less congested days of literary effort, an Author was accustomed to address the Public as “Gentle Reader.” It was a civil phrase, involving a pretty piece of flattery. It implied three things: first, that if the Reader were not “gentle,” the Author’s courtesy might persuade him or her to become so—secondly, that criticism, whether favourable or the reverse, might perhaps be generously postponed till the reading of the book was finished,—and thirdly, that the Author had no wish to irritate the Reader’s feelings, but rather sought to prepare and smooth the way to a friendly understanding. Now I am at one with my predecessors in all these delicate points of understanding, and as I am about to relate what every person of merely average intelligence is likely to regard as an incredible narrative, I think it as well to begin politely, in the old-fashioned “grand” manner of appeal, which is half apologetic, and half conciliatory. “Gentle Reader,” therefore, I pray you to be friends with me! Do not lose either patience or temper while following the strange adventures of a very strange woman,—though in case you should be disappointed in seeking for what you will not find, let me say at once that my story is not of the Sex Problem type. No! My heroine is not perverted from the paths of decency and order, or drawn to a bad end; in fact, I cannot bring her to an end at all, as she is still very much alive and doing uncommonly well for herself. Any end for Diana May would seem not only incongruous, but manifestly impossible.

Life, as we all know, is a curious business. It is like a stage mask with two faces,—the one comic, the other tragic. The way we look at it depends on the way it looks at us. Some of us have seen it on both sides, and are neither edified nor impressed.

Then, again—life is a series of “sensations.” We who live now are always describing life. They who lived long ago did the same. It seems that none of us have ever found, or can ever find, anything better to occupy ourselves withal. All through the ages the millions of human creatures who once were born and who are now dead, passed their time on this planet in experiencing “sensations,” and relating their experiences to one another, each telling his or her little “tale of woe” in a different way. So anxious were they, and so anxious are we, to explain the special and individual manner in which our mental and physical vibrations respond to the particular circumstances in which we find ourselves, that all systems of religion, government, science, art and philosophy have been, and are, evolved simply and solely out of the pains and pleasures of a mass of atoms who are “feeling” things and trying to express their feelings to each other. These feelings they designate by various lofty names, such as “faith,” “logic,” “reason,” “opinion,” “wisdom,” and so forth; and upon them they build temporary fabrics of Law and Order, vastly solid in appearance, yet collapsible as a house of cards, and crumbling at a touch, while every now and again there comes a sudden, unlooked-for interruption to their discussions and plans—a kind of dark pause and suggestion of chaos, such as a great war, a plague or other unwelcome “visitation of God,” wherein “feelings” almost cease, or else people are too frightened to talk about them. They are chilled into nervous silence and wait, afflicted by fear and discouragement, till the cloud passes and the air clears. Then the perpetual buzz of “feeling” begins again in the mixed bass and treble of complaint and rejoicing,—a kind of monotonous noise without harmony. External Nature has no part in it, for Man is the only creature that ever tries to explain the phenomena of existence. It is not in the least comprehensible why he alone should thus trouble and perplex himself,—or why his incessant consideration and analysis of his own emotions should be allowed to go on,—for, whatsoever education may do for us, we shall never be educated out of the sense of our own importance. Which is an odd fact, moving many thoughtful minds to never-ending wonder.

My heroine, Diana May, wondered. She was always wondering. She spent weeks, and months, and years, in a chronic state of wonder. She wondered about herself and several other people, because she thought both herself and those several other people so absurd. She found no use for herself in the general scheme of things, and tried, with much patient humility, to account for herself. But though she read books on science, books on psychology, books on natural and spiritual law, and studied complex problems of evolution and selection of species till her poor dim eyes grew dimmer, and the “lines from nose to chin” became ever longer and deeper, she could discover no way through the thick bog of her difficulties. She was an awkward numeral in a sum; she did not know why she came in or how she was to be got out.

Her father and mother were what are called “very well-to-do-people,” with a pleasantly suburban reputation for respectability and regular church attendance. Mr. James Polydore May,—this was his name in full, as engraved on his visiting card—was a small man in stature, but in self-complacency the biggest one alive. He had made a considerable fortune in a certain manufacturing business which need not here be specified, and he had speculated with it in a shrewd and careful manner which was not without a touch of genius, the happy result being that he had always gained and never lost. Now at the age of sixty, he was free from all financial care, and could rattle gold and silver in his trousers-pockets with a sense of pleasure in their clinking sound,—they had the sweetness of church-bells which proclaim the sure nearness of a prosperous town. He was not a bad-looking little veteran,—he had, as he was fond of saying of himself, “a good chest measurement,” and though his legs were short, they were not bandy. Inclined to corpulence, the two lower buttons of his waistcoat were generally left undone, that he might the more easily stretch himself after a full meal. His physiognomy was not so much intelligent as pugnacious—his bushy eyebrows, hair and moustache gave him at certain moments the look of an irascible old terrier. He had keen small eyes, coming close to the bridge of a rather pronounced Israelitish nose, and to these characteristics was added a generally assertive air,—an air which went before him like an advancing atmosphere, heralding his approach as a “somebody”—that sort of atmosphere which invariably accompanies nobodies. His admiration of the fair sex was open and not always discreet, and from his youth up he had believed himself capable of subjugating any and every woman. He had an agreeable “first manner” of his own on introduction,—a manner which was absolutely deceptive, giving no clue to the uglier side of his nature. His wife could have told whole stories about this “first manner” of his, had she not long ago given up the attempt to retain any hold on her own individuality. She had been a woman of average intelligence when she married him,—commonplace, certainly, but good-natured and willing to make the best of everything; needless to say that the illusions of youth vanished with the first years of wedded life (as they are apt to do), and she had gradually sunk into a flabby condition of resigned nonentity, seeing there was nothing else left for her. The dull, tame tenor of her days had once been interrupted by the birth of her only child Diana, who as long as she was small and young, and while she was being educated under the usual system of governesses and schools, was an object of delight, affection, amusement and interest, and who, when she grew up and “came out” at eighteen as a graceful, pretty girl of the freshest type of English beauty, gave her mother something to love and to live for,—but alas!—Diana had proved the bitterest of all her disappointments. The “coming-out” business, the balls, the race-meetings and other matrimonial traps had been set in vain;—the training, the music, the dancing, the “toilettes”—had failed to attract,—and Diana had not married. She had fallen in love, as most girls do before they know much about men,—and she had engaged herself to an officer with “expectations” for whom, with a romantic devotion as out of date as the poems of Chaucer, she had waited for seven long years in a resigned condition of alarming constancy,—and then, when his “expectations” were realised, he had promptly thrown her over for a fairer and younger partner. By that time Diana was what is called “getting on.” All this had tried the temper of Mrs. James Polydore May considerably—and she took refuge from her many vexations in the pleasures of the table and the consolations of sleep. The result of this mode of procedure was that she became corpulent and unwieldy,—her original self was swallowed up in a sort of featherbed of adipose tissue, from which she peered out on the world with protruding, lustreless eyes, the tip of her small nose seeming to protest feebly against the injustice of being well-nigh walled from sight between the massive flabby cheeks on either side of its never classic and distinctly parsimonious proportions. With oversleep and over-eating she had matured into a stupid and somewhat obstinate woman, with a habit of saying unmeaningly nice or nasty things:—she would “gush” affectionately to all and sundry,—to the maid who fastened her shoes as ardently as to a friend of many years standing,—yet she would mock her own guests behind their backs, or unkindly criticise the physical and mental defects of the very man or woman she had flattered obsequiously five minutes before. So that she was not exactly a “safe” acquaintance,—you never knew where to have her. But,—as is often the case with these placidly smiling, obese ladies,—everyone seemed to be in a conspiracy to call her “sweet,” and “dear” and “kind,” whereas in very truth she was one of the most selfish souls extant. Her charities were always carefully considered and bestowed in quarters where she was likely to get most credit for them,—her profusely expressed sympathy for other people’s troubles exhausted itself in a few moments, and she would straightway forget what form of loss or misfortune she had just been commiserating,—while, despite her proverbial “dear” and “sweet” attributes, she had a sulky temper which would hold her in its grip for days, during which time she would neither speak nor be spoken to. Her chief interest and attention were centred on eatables, and she always made a point of going to breakfast in advance of her husband, so that she might select for herself the most succulent morsels out of the regulation dish of fried bacon, before he had a chance to look in. Husband and wife were always arguing with each other, and both were always wrong in each other’s opinion. Mrs. James Polydore May considered her worser half as something of a wayward and peevish child, and he in turn looked upon her as a useful domestic female—“perfectly simple and natural,” he was wont to say, a statement which, if true, would have been vastly convenient to him as he could then have deceived her more easily. But “deeper than ever plummet sounded” was the “simplicity” wherewith Mrs. James Polydore May was endowed, and the “natural” way in which she managed to secure her own comfort, convenience and ease while assuming to be the most guileless and unselfish of women; indeed there were times when she was fairly astonished at herself for having “arranged things so cleverly,” as she expressed it. Whenever a woman of her type admits to having “arranged things cleverly” you may be sure that the most astute lawyer alive could never surpass her in the height or the depth of duplicity.

Such, briefly outlined, were the characteristics of the couple who, in an absent-minded moment, had taken upon themselves the responsibility of bringing a woman into the world for whom apparently the world had no use. Woman, considered in the rough abstract, is only the pack-mule of man,—his goods, his chattels, created specially to be the “vessel” of his passion and humour,—and without his favour and support she is by universal consent set down as a lonely and wandering mistake. Such is the Law and the Prophets. Under these circumstances, which have recently shown signs of yielding to pressure, Diana, the rapidly ageing spinster daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Polydore May, was in pitiable plight. No man wanted her, not even to serve him as a pack-mule. No man sought to add her person to his goods and chattels, and at the time this true story opens, she was not fair or fascinating or young enough to serve him as a toy for his delight, a plaything of his pleasure. Life had been very monotonous for her since she had passed the turning-point of thirty years,—“nice” people, who always say nasty things, remarked “how passée she was getting,”—thereby helping the ageing process considerably. She, meanwhile, bore her lot with exemplary cheerfulness,—she neither grizzled nor complained, nor showed herself envious of youth or youthful loveliness. A comforting idea of “duty” took possession of her mind, and she devoted herself to the tenderest care of her fat mother and irritable father, waiting upon them like a slave, and saying her prayers for them night and morning as simply as a child, without the faintest suspicion that they were past praying for. The years went on, and she took pains to educate herself in all that might be useful,—she read much and thought more,—she mastered two or three languages, and spoke them with ease and fluency, and she was an admirable musician. She had an abundance of pretty light-brown hair, and all her movements were graceful, but alas!—the unmistakable look of growing old was stamped upon her once mobile features,—she had become angular and flat-chested, and the unbecoming straight line from waist to knee, which gave her figure a kind of pitiful masculinity, was developing with hard and bony relentlessness. One charm she had, which she herself recognised and took care to cultivate—“a low, sweet voice, an excellent thing in woman.” If one chanced to hear her speaking in an adjoining room, the effect was remarkable,—one felt that some exquisite creature of immortal youth and tenderness was expressing a heavenly thought in music.

Mr. James Polydore May, as I have already ventured to suggest, was nothing if not respectable. He was a J.P. This,—in English suburban places at least,—is the hall-mark of an unimpeachable rectitude. Another sign of his good standing and general uprightness was, that at stated seasons he always went for a change of air. We all know that the person who remains in one place the whole year round is beyond the pale and cannot be received in the best society. Mr. May had a handsome house and grounds in the close vicinity of Richmond, within easy distance of town, but when the London “season” ended, he and Mrs. May invariably discovered their home to be “stuffy,” and sighed for more expansive breathing and purer oxygen than Richmond could supply. They had frequently taken a shooting or fishing in Scotland, but that was in the days when there were still matrimonial hopes for Diana, and when marriageable men could be invited, not only to handle rod and gun, but to inspect their “one ewe-lamb,” which they were over-anxious to sell to the highest bidder. These happy dreams were at an end. It was no longer worth while to lay in extensive supplies of whisky and cigars by way of impetus to timid or hesitating Benedicts, when they came back from a “day on the moors,” tired, sleepy and stupid enough to drift into proposals of marriage almost unconsciously. Mr. May seldom invited young men to stay with him now, for the very reason that he could not get them; they found him a “bore,”—his wife dull, and his daughter an “old maid,”—a term of depreciation still freely used by the golden youth of the day, despite the modern and more civil term of “lady bachelor.” So he drew in the horns of his past ambition, and consoled himself with the society of two or three portly men of his own age and habits,—men who played golf and billiards, and who, if they could do nothing else, smoked continuously. And for the necessary “change of air,” the seaside offered itself as a means of health without too excessive an expenditure, and instead of “chasing the wild deer and following the roe,” a simple hammock chair on the sandy beach, and a golf course within easy walking distance provided sufficient relaxation. Not that Mr. May was in any sense parsimonious; he did not take a cottage by the sea, or cheap lodgings,—on the contrary, he was always prepared to “do the thing handsomely,” and to select what the house-agents call an “ideal” residence.

At the particular time I am writing of, he had just settled down for the summer in a very special “ideal” on the coast of Devon. It was a house which had formerly belonged to an artist, but the artist had recently died, and his handsome and not inconsolable widow stated that she found it dull. She was glad to let it for two or three months, in order to “get away” with that restless alacrity which distinguishes so many people who find anything better than their own homes, and Mr. and Mrs. Polydore May, though, as they said, it certainly was “a little quiet after London,” were glad to have it, at quite a moderate rental for the charming place it really was. The gardens were exquisitely laid out and carefully kept; the smooth velvety lawns ran down almost to the sea, where a little white gate opened out from the green of the grass to the gold of the sand,—the rooms were tastefully furnished, and Diana, when she first saw the place, going some days in advance of her father and mother, as was her wont, in order to make things ready and comfortable for them, thought how happy she could be if only such a house and garden were hers to enjoy, independently of others. For a week before her respected and respectable parents came, in the intervals of unpacking, and arranging matters so that the domestic “staff” could assume their ordinary duties with smoothness and regularity, she wandered about alone, exploring the beauties of her surroundings, her thin, flat figure striking a curious note of sadness and solitude, as she sometimes stood in the garden among a wealth of flowers, looking out to the tender dove-grey line of the horizon across the sea. The servants peeping at her from kitchen and pantry windows, made their own comments.

“Poor dear!” said the cook, thoughtfully—“she do wear thin!”

“Ah, it’s a sad look-out for ’er!” sighed the upper housemaid, who was engaged to a pork-butcher with an alarmingly red face, whom one would have thought any self-respecting young woman would have died rather than wedded. “To be all alone in the world like that, unpertected, as she will be when her pa and ma have gone!”

“Well, they won’t go in a hurry!” put in the butler, who was an observing man—“Leastways, Mr. May won’t; he’ll ’old on to life like a cat to a mouse—he will! He’s that hearty!—why, he thinks he’s about thirty instead of sixty. The missis, now,—if she goes on eating as she do,—she’ll drop off sudden like a burstin’ bean,—but he!—Ah! I shouldn’t wonder if he outlasted us all!”

“Lor, Mr. Jonson!” exclaimed the upper housemaid—“How you do talk!—and you such a young man too!”

Jonson smiled, inwardly flattered. He was well over forty, but like his master wished to be considered a kind of youth, fit for dancing, tennis and other such gamesome occupations.

“Miss Diana,” he now continued, with a judicial air—“has lost her chances. It’s a pity!—for no one won’t marry her now. There’s too many young gels about,—no man wants the old ’uns. She’ll have to take up a ‘mission’ or something to get noticed at all.”

Here a quiet-looking woman named Grace Laurie interposed. She was the ladies’ maid, and she was held in great respect, for she was engaged to marry (at some uncertain and distant date) an Australian farmer with considerable means.

“Miss Diana is very clever—” she said—“She could do almost anything she cared to. She’s got a great deal more in her than people think. And”—here Grace hesitated—“she’s prettily made, too, though she’s over thin,—when she comes from her bath with all her hair hanging down, she looks sweet!” A gurgle of half hesitating, half incredulous laughter greeted this remark.

“Well, it’s few ladies as looks ‘sweet’ coming from the bath!” declared the butler with emphasis. “I’ve had many a peep at the missis——”

Here the laughter broke out loudly, with little cries of: “Oh! Oh!”—and the kitchen chatter ended.

It had come to the last day of Diana’s free and uncontrolled enjoyment of the charming seaside Eden which her parents had selected as a summer retreat,—and regretfully realising this, she strolled lingeringly about the garden, inhaling the sweet odours of roses and mignonette with the salty breath of the sea. The next morning Mr. and Mrs. Polydore May would arrive in time for luncheon, and once more the old domestic jog-trot would commence,—the same routine as that which prevailed at Richmond, with no other change save such as was conveyed in the differing scene and surroundings. Breakfast punctually at nine,—luncheon at one,—tea at four-thirty,—dinner at a quarter to eight. Dinner at a quarter to eight was one of Diana’s bugbears—why not have it at eight o’clock, she thought? The “quarter to” was an irritating juggling with time for which there was no necessity. But she had protested in vain; dinner at quarter to eight was one of her mother’s many domestic “fads.” Between the several meals enumerated there would be nothing doing,—nothing, that is to say, of any consequence or use to anybody. Diana knew the whole weary, stupid round,—Mr. May would pass the morning reading the papers either in the garden or on the sandy shore,—Mrs. May would give a few muddled and contradictory orders to the servants, who never obeyed them literally, but only as far as they could be conveniently carried out, and then would retire to write letters to friends or acquaintances; in the afternoon Mr. May would devote himself to golf, while his wife slept till tea-time,—then she would take a stroll in the garden, and perhaps—only perhaps—talk over a few household affairs with her daughter. Then came the “quarter to eight” dinner with desultory and somewhat wrangling conversation, after which Mrs. May slept again, and Mr. May played billiards, if he could find anyone to play with him,—if not, he practised “tricky” things alone with the cue. Neither of them ever thought that this sort of life was not conducive to cheerfulness so far as their daughter Diana was concerned,—indeed they never considered her at all. When she was young—ah yes, of course!—it was necessary to find such entertainment and society for her as might “show her off,”—but now, when she was no longer marriageable in the conventionally accepted sense of marriage, she was left to bear the brunt of fate as best she might, and learn to be contented with the plain feminine duty of keeping house for her parents. It must be stated that she did this “keeping house” business to perfection,—she controlled expenses without a taint of meanness, managed the servants, and made the whole commonplace affair of ordinary living run smoothly. But whatever she did, she never had a word of praise from either her father or mother,—they took her careful service as their right, and never seemed to realise that most of their comforts and conveniences were the result of her forethought and good sense. Certainly they did not trouble themselves as to whether she was happy or the reverse.

She thought of this,—just a little, but not morosely—on the last evening she was to spend alone at “Rose Lea” as the “ideal” summer residence was called,—probably on account of its facing west, and gathering on its walls and windows all the brilliant flush of the sunset. She was somewhat weary,—she had been occupied for hours in arranging her mother’s bedroom and seeing that all the numerous luxuries needed by that placid mass of superfluous flesh were in their place and order, and now that she had finished everything she had to do, she was glad to have the remainder of her time to herself in the garden, thinking, and—as usual—wondering. Her wonder was just simply this:—How long would she have to go on in the same clockwork mechanism of life as that which now seemed to be her destiny? She had made certain variations in the slow music of her days by study,—yes, that was true!—but then no one made use of her studies,—no one knew the extent of her attainments, and even in her music she had no encouragement,—no one ever asked her to play. All her efforts seemed so much wasted output of energy. She had certain private joys of her own,—a great love of Nature, which like an open door in Heaven allowed her to enter familiarly into some of the marvels and benedictions of creative intelligence; she loved books, and could read them in French and Italian, as well as in her native English; and she had taken to the study of Russian with some success. Greek and Latin she had learned sufficiently well to understand the great authors of the elder world in their own script,—but all these intellectual diversions were organised and followed on her own initiative, and as she sometimes said to herself a trifle bitterly:

“Nobody knows I can do anything but check the tradesmen’s books and order the dinner.”

This was a fact,—nobody knew. Ordinary people considered her unattractive; what they saw was a scraggy woman of medium height with a worn face visibly beginning to wrinkle under a profusion of brown hair,—a woman who “had been” pretty when younger, but who now had a rather restrained and nervous manner, and who was seldom inclined to speak,—yet, who, when spoken to, answered always gently, in a sweet voice with a wonderfully musical accentuation. No one thought for a moment that she might possibly be something of a scholar,—and certainly no one imagined that above all things she was a great student of all matters pertaining to science. Every book she could hear of on scientific subjects, whether treating of wireless telegraphy, light-rays, radium, or other marvellous discoveries of the age, she made it her special business to secure and to study patiently and comprehendingly, the result being that her mind was richly stored with material for thought on far higher planes than the majority of reading folk ever attempt to reach. But she never spoke of the things in which she was so deeply interested, and as she was reserved and almost awkwardly shy in company, the occasional callers on her mother scarcely noticed her, except casually and with a careless civility which meant nothing. She was seen to knit and to do Jacobean tapestry rather well, and people spoke to her of these accomplishments as being what they thought she was most likely to understand,—but they looked askance at her dress, which was always a little tasteless and unbecoming, and opined that “poor dear Mrs. May must be dreadfully disappointed in her daughter!”

It never occurred to these easy-tongued folk that Diana was dreadfully disappointed in herself. This was the trouble of it. She asked the question daily and could find no answer. And yet,—she was useful to her parents surely? Yes,—but in her own heart she knew they would have been just as satisfied with a paid “companion housekeeper.” They did not really “love” her, now that she had turned out such a failure. Alas, poor Diana! Her hunger for “love” was her misfortune; it was the one thing in all the world she craved. It had been this desire of love that had charmed her impulsive soul when in the heyday of her youth and prettiness, she had engaged herself to the man for whom she had waited seven years, only to be heartlessly thrown over at last. She had returned all his letters in exchange for her own at the end of the affair,—all, save two,—and these two she read every night before she said her prayers to keep them well fixed in her memory. One of them contained the following passage:

“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.”

The other letter, written some years later, was rather differently expressed.

“I am quite sure you will understand that time has naturally worked changes, in you as well as in myself, and I am obliged to confess that the feelings I once had for you no longer exist. But you are a sensible woman, and you are old enough now to realise that we are better apart.”

“You are old enough now,” was the phrase that jarred upon Diana’s inward sense, like the ugly sound of a clanking chain in a convict’s cell. “You are old enough now.” Well, it was true!—she was “old enough,”—but she had taken this “oldness” upon her while faithfully waiting for her lover. And he had been the first to punish her for her constancy! It was very strange. Indeed, it was one of those many things that had brought her to her chronic state of wonderment. The great writers,—more notably great poets, themselves the most fickle of men,—eulogised fidelity in love as a heavenly virtue. Why then, when she had practised it, had she been so sorely rewarded? Yet, since the rupture of her engagement, and the long and bitter pain she had endured over this breaking up of all she had held most dear, her many studies and her careful reading had gradually calmed and strengthened her nature, and she was able to admit to herself that there were possibly worse things than the loss of a heartless lover who might have proved a still more heartless husband. She felt no resentment towards him, and his memory now scarcely moved her to a thrill of sorrow or regret. She only asked herself why it had all happened? Of course there was no answer to such a query,—there never is. And she was “old enough”—yes, quite “old enough” to put away all romance and sentimentality. Yet, as she walked slowly in the garden among the roses, and watched the sea sparkling in the warm after-glow of what had been an exceptionally fine sun setting, the old foolish craving stirred in her heart again. The scent of the flowers, the delicate breathings of the summer air, the flash of the sea-gulls’ white wings skimming over the glittering sand pools,—all these expressions of natural beauty saddened while they entranced her soul. She longed to be one with them, sharing their life, and imparting to others something of their joy.

“They never grow old!” she said, half aloud. “Or if they do, it is not perceived. They seem always the same—always beautiful and vital.”

Here she paused. A standard rose tree weighted with splendid blossom showed among its flowers one that had been cramped and spoiled by the over-profusion and close pressure of its companions,—it was decaying amid the eager crowd of bursting buds that looked almost humanly anxious to be relieved of its presence. With soft, deft fingers Diana broke it away from the stem and let it drop to earth.

“That is me!” she said. “And that’s what ought to become of me! Nothing withered or ugly ought to live in such a lovely world. I am a blot on beauty.”

She looked out to sea again. The after-glow had almost faded; only one broad line of dull gold showed the parting trail of the sun.

“No—there’s no hope!” she murmured, with an expressive gesture of her hands. “I must plod on day after day in the same old rut of things, doing my duty, which is perhaps all I ought to ask to do,—trying to make my mother comfortable and to keep my father in decent humour,—and then—then—when they go, I shall be alone in the world. No one will care what becomes of me,—even as it is now no one cares whether I live or die!”

This is the discordant note in many a life’s music,—“no one cares.” When “no one cares” for us, we do not care about ourselves or about anybody else. And in “not caring” we stumble blindly and unconsciously on our only chance of safety and happiness. A heartless truth!—but a truth all the same. For when we have become utterly indifferent to Destiny, Destiny like a spoiled child does all she can to attract our notice, and manifests a sudden interest in us of which we had never dreamed. And the less we care, the more she clings!

CHAPTER II

Diana was “old enough,” as her recalcitrant lover had informed her, to value the blessing of a good night’s rest. She had a clear conscience,—she was, indeed, that rara avis, in these days, a perfectly innocent-minded woman, and she slept as calmly and peacefully as a child. When she woke to the light of a radiant morning, with the sunshine making diamonds of the sea, she felt almost young again as she tripped to and fro, putting the final touches of taste to the pretty drawing-room, and giving to every nook and corner that indefinable air of pleasant occupation which can only be bestowed by the hand of a dainty, beauty-loving woman. At the appointed hour, the automobile was sent to the station to meet Mr. and Mrs. James Polydore May, and punctual to time the worthy couple arrived, both husband and wife slightly out of humour with the heat of the fine summer’s day and the fatigue of the journey from London.

“Well, Diana!” sighed her mother, turning a fat, buff-coloured cheek to be kissed, “is the house really decent and comfortable?”

“It’s lovely!” declared Diana, cheerfully—“I’m sure you’ll be happy here, Mother! The garden is perfectly delightful!”

“Your mother spoke of the house, not the garden,” interposed Mr. May, judicially. “You really must be accurate, Diana! Yes—er—yes!—that will do!”—this, as Diana somewhat shrinkingly embraced him. “Your mother is always suspicious—and rightly so—of damp in rented country houses, but I think we made ourselves certain that there was nothing of that kind before we decided to take it. And no poultry clucking?—no noises of a farmyard close by? No? That’s a comfort! Yes—er—it seems fairly suitable. Is luncheon ready?”

Diana replied that it was, and the family of three were soon seated at table in the dining-room, discussing lobster mayonnaise. As Mrs. May bent her capacious bosom over her plate, her round eyes goggling with sheer greed, and Mr. May ate rapidly as was his wont, casting sharp glances about him to see if he could find fault with anything, Diana’s heart sank more and more. It was just the same sort of luncheon as at home in Richmond, tainted by the same sordid atmosphere of commonplace. Her parents showed no spark of pleasurable animation or interest in the change of scene or the loveliness of the garden and sea as glimpsed through the open French windows,—everything had narrowed into the savoury but compressed limit of lobster mayonnaise.

“Too much mustard in this, as usual,” said Mr. May, scraping his plate noisily.

“Not at all,” retorted his wife, with placid obstinacy. “If there is anything Marsh knows how to make with absolute perfection, it is mayonnaise.”

Marsh was the cook, and the cause of many a matrimonial wrangle.

“Oh, of course, Marsh is faultless!” sneered Mr. May. “This house has been taken solely that Marsh shall have a change of air and extra perquisites!”

Mrs. May’s eyes goggled a little more prominently, and protecting her voluminous bust with a dinner-napkin, she took a fresh supply of mayonnaise. Diana, who was a small eater and who rather grudged the time her parents spent over their meals, took no part in this sort of “sparring,” which always went on between the progenitors of her being. She was thankful when luncheon was over and she could escape to her own room. There she found the maid, Grace Laurie, with some letters which had just arrived.

“These are for you, miss,” said Grace. “I brought them up out of the hall, as I thought you’d like to be quiet for a bit.”

Diana smiled, gratefully.

“Thank you, Grace. Mother is coming upstairs directly to lie down—will you see she has all she wants?”

“Yes, miss.” Then, after a pause, “It’s you that should lie down and get a rest, Miss Diana,—you’ve been doing ever such a lot all these days. You should just take it easy now.”

Diana smiled again. There was something of kindly compassion in the “take it easy” suggestion—but she nodded assentingly and the well-meaning maid left her.

There was a long mirror against the wall, and Diana suddenly saw her own reflection in it. A hot flush of annoyance reddened her face,—what a scarecrow she looked to herself! So angular and bony! Her plain navy linen frock hung as straight as a man’s trousers; no gracious curves of body gave prettiness to its uncompromising folds,—and as for her poor worn countenance, she could have thrown things at it for its doleful pointed chin and sharp nose! She looked steadfastly into her own eyes,—they were curious in colour, and rather pretty with their melting hues of blue and grey,—but, oh!—those crows’-feet at the corners!—oh, the wrinkling of the eyelids!—oh, the tiredness, and dimness and ache!

Turning abruptly away, she glanced at the small time-piece on her dressing-table. It was three o’clock. Then she took off her navy linen gown,—one of the “serviceable,” ugly sort of things her father was never tired of recommending for her wear,—and slipped on a plain little white wrapper which she had made for herself out of a cheap length of nun’s veiling. She loosened her hair and brushed it out,—it fell to her waist in pretty rippling waves, and it was full of golden “glints,” so much so that spiteful persons of her own sex had even said—“at her age it can’t be natural; it must be dyed!” Nevertheless, its curling tendency and its brightness were all its own, but Diana took no heed of its beauty, and she would have been more than incredulous had anyone told her that in this array, or, rather, disarray, she had the appearance of a time-worn picture of some delicate saint in a French mediæval “Book of Hours.” But such was her aspect. And with the worn saint look upon her, she drew a reclining chair to the window and lay down, stretching herself restfully at full length, and gazing out to sea, her unopened letters on her lap. How beautiful was that seemingly infinite line of shining water, melting into shining sky!—how far removed from the little troubles and terrors of the world of mankind!

“I wonder——!” she murmured. The old story again!—she was always wondering! Then, with eyes growing almost youthful in their intense longing for comprehension, she became absorbed in one of those vague reveries, which, like the things of eternity, have no beginning and no end. She “wondered”—yes!—she wondered why, for example, Nature was so grand and reasonable, and Man so mean and petty, when surely he could, if he chose, be master of his own fate,—master of all the miracles of air, fire and water, and supreme sovereign of his own soul! A passage in a book she had lately been reading recurred to her memory.

“If any man once mastered the secret of governing the chemical atoms of which he is composed, he would discover the fruit of the Tree of Life of which, as his Creator said, he would ‘take, eat and live for ever!’”

She sighed,—a sigh of weariness and momentary depression, then began turning over her letters and glancing indifferently at the handwriting on each envelope, till one, addressed in a remarkably clear, bold caligraphy, made her smile in evidently pleasurable anticipation.

“From Sophy Lansing,” she said. “Dear little Sophy! She’s always amusing, with her Suffragette enthusiasms, and her vivacious independent ways! And she’s one of those very few clever women who manage to keep womanly and charming in spite of their cleverness. Oh, what a fat letter!”

She opened it and read the dashing scrawl, still smiling.

“Dearest Di,

“I suppose you are now settling down ‘by the sad sea waves’ with Pa and Ma! Oh, you poor thing! I can see you hard at it like a donkey at a well, trotting ‘in the common round, the daily task’ of keeping Pa as tolerable in temper as such an old curmudgeon can be, and Ma as reposeful under her burden of superfluous flesh as is at all possible. What a life for you, patient Grizel! Why don’t you throw it up? You are really clever, and you could do so much. This is Woman’s Day, and you are a woman of exceptional ability. You know I’ve asked you over and over again to retire from the whole domestic ‘show,’ and leave those most uninteresting and selfish old parents of yours to their own devices, with a paid housekeeper to look after their food, which is all they really care about. Come and live with me in London. We should be quite happy together, for I’m good-natured and sensible, and so are you, and we’re neither of us contending for a man, so we shouldn’t quarrel. And you’d wake up, Diana!—you’d wake to find that there are many more precious things in life than Pa and Ma! I could even find you a few men to entertain you, though most of them become bores after about an hour—especially the ones that think themselves vastly amusing. Like your Pa, you know!—who, when he tells a very ancient ‘good story,’ thinks that God Himself ought to give up everything else to listen to him! No, don’t be shocked! I’m not really irreverent—but you know it’s true. Woe betide the hapless wight, male or female, who dares utter a word while Pa Polydore is on the story trail! How I’ve longed to throw things at him! and have only refrained for your sake! Well! God a’ mercy on us, as Shakespeare’s Ophelia says, and defend us from the anecdotal men!

“You’ll perhaps be interested to hear that a proposal of marriage was made to me last night. The bold adventurer is rather like your Pa,—well ‘on’ in years, rich, with a prosperous ‘tum’—and a general aspect of assertive affluence. I said ‘No,’ of course, and he asked me if I knew what I was doing? Exactly as if he thought I might be drunk, or dreaming! I replied that I was quite aware of myself, of him, and the general locality. ‘And yet you say No?’ he almost whispered, in a kind of stupefied amazement. I repeated ‘No’—and ‘No,’—and clinched the matter by the additional remark that he was the last sort of man I would ever wish to marry. Then he smiled feebly, and said ‘Poor child!—you have been sadly led astray! These new ideas——’ I cut him short by ringing the bell and ordering tea, and fortunately just at the moment in came Jane Prowser—you know her!—the tall, bony woman who goes in for ‘Eugenics,’ and she did the scarecrow business quite effectively. As soon as she began to talk in her high, rasping voice he went! Then I had tea alone with the Prowser—rather a trying meal, as she would, she would describe in detail all the deformities and miseries of a child ‘wot ’adn’t no business to be born,’ as my housemaid once remarked of a certain domestic upset. However, I got rid of her after she had eaten all the cress and tomato sandwiches, and then I started to read a batch of letters from abroad. I’m so thankful for my foreign correspondents!—they write and spell so well, and always have something interesting to say. One of my great friends in Paris, Blanche de Rouailles, sent me a most curious advertisement, which she tells me is appearing in all the French papers—I enclose it for you, as you are so ‘scientific’ and it may interest you. It is rather curiously worded and sounds ‘uncanny!’ But it occupies nearly half a column in all the principal Paris papers and is repeated in five different languages,—French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and English. I suppose it’s a snare or a ‘do’ of some sort. The world is full of scoundrels, even in science! Now remember what I tell you! Come to me at once if Pa and Ma kick over the traces and allow their ingrained selfishness to break out of bounds. There’s plenty of room for you in my cosy little flat and we can have a real good time together. Don’t bother about money,—with your talent and knowledge of languages you can soon earn some, and I’ll put you in the way of it. You really must do something for your own advantage,—surely you don’t mean to waste your whole life in soothing Pa and massaging Ma? It may be dutiful but it must be dull! I don’t think all the massaging in the world will ever reduce Ma to normal proportions, and certainly nothing can ever cure Pa of his detestable humours which are always lurking in ambush below his surface ‘manner,’ ready to jump out like little black devils on the smallest provocation. We can never be really grateful enough, dear Di, for our single blessedness! Imagine what life would have been for us with husbands like Pa! Absolute misery!—for you and I could never have taken refuge in food and fat like Ma! We would have died sooner than concentrate our souls on peas and asparagus!—we would have gone to the stake like martyrs rather than have allowed our bosoms to swell with the interior joys of roast pork and stuffing! Oh yes!—there is much to be thankful for in our spinsterhood,—we can go to our little beds in peace, knowing that no pig-like snoring from the ‘superior’ brute will disturb the holy hours of the night!—and if we are clever enough to make a little money, we can spend it as we like, without being cross-examined as to why it is that the dress we wore four years ago is worn out, and why we must have another! I could run on for pages and pages concerning the blessings and privileges of unmarried women, but I’ll restrain my enthusiasm till we meet. Let that meeting be soon!—and remember that I am always at your service as a true friend and that I’ll do anything in the world to help you out of your domestic harness. For the old people who ‘drive’ you can’t and won’t see what a patient, kind, helpful clever daughter they’ve got, and they don’t deserve to keep you. Let them spend their spare cash on a housekeeper, who is sure to cheat them (and a good job too!) and take your freedom. Get away!—never mind how, or where, or when,—but don’t spend all your life in drudging. You’ve done enough of it—get away! This is the best of good advice from your loving friend,

“Sophy Lansing.”

A slight shadow of meditative gravity clouded Diana’s face as she finished reading this letter. She was troubled by her own thoughts; Sophy’s lively strictures on her parents were undoubtedly correct and deserved,—and yet—“father and mother” were “father and mother” after all! It is curious how these two words still keep their sentimental significance, despite “state” education! “Mother” in the lower classes is often a drab, and in the higher a frivolous wastrel; “father” in the slums may beat his children black and blue, and in Mayfair neglect them to the point of utmost indifference,—but “mother and father,” totally undeserving as they often are, still come in for a share of their offspring’s vague consideration and lingering respect. “Education” of the wrong sort, however, is doing its best to deprive them of this regard, and it appears likely that the younger generation will soon be so highly instructed as to be able to ignore “mother and father” as easily as full-fledged cygnets ignore the parent birds who drive them away from their nesting haunts. But Diana was “old-fashioned”; she had an affectionate nature, and she took pathetic pains to persuade herself that “Pa” and “Ma” meant to be kind, and must in their hearts love her, their only child. This was pure fallacy, but it was the only little bit of hope and trust left to her in a hard world, and she was loth to let it go. The smallest expression of tenderness from that ruffled old human terrier, her father, would have brought her to his feet, an even more willing slave to his moods than she already was,—a loving embrace from her mother would have moved her almost to tears of joy and gratitude, and would have doubly strengthened her unreasoning and unselfish devotion to the “bogey” of her duty. But she never received any such sign of affection or encouragement from year’s end to year’s end,—and it was like a strange dream to her now to recall that when she had been young, in the time of her “teens,” her father had called her his “beautiful girl,” and her mother had chosen pretty frocks for her “darling child!” Youth and the prospects of marriage had made this difference in the temperature of parental tenderness. Now that she was at that fatal stop-gap called “middle-age” and a hopeless spinster, the pretty frocks and the “beautiful-girl-darling-child” period had vanished with her matrimonial chances. There was no help for it.

At this point in her thoughts she gave a little half-unconscious sigh. Mechanically she folded up Sophy Lansing’s letter, and as she did so, noticed that a slip of printed paper had fallen out of it and lay on the floor. She turned herself on her reclining chair and stooped for it,—then as she picked it up realised that it must be the advertisement in the five different languages which her friend had mentioned. Glancing carelessly over it at first, but afterwards more attentively, her interest was aroused by its unusual wording, and then as she read it over and over again she found in it a singular attraction. It ran as follows:

“To ANY WOMAN who is alone in the world WITHOUT CLAIMS on HER TIME or HER AFFECTIONS.

“A SCIENTIST, engaged in very IMPORTANT and DIFFICULT WORK, requires the ASSISTANCE and CO-OPERATION of a Courageous and Determined Woman of mature years. She must have a fair knowledge of modern science, and must not shrink from dangerous experiments or be afraid to take risks in the pursuit of discoveries which may be beneficial to the human race. Every personal care, consideration and courtesy will be shown towards her, and she will be paid a handsome sum for her services and be provided with full board and lodging in an elegant suite of apartments placed freely at her disposal. She must be prepared to devote herself for one or two years entirely to the study of very intricate problems in chemistry, concerning which she will be expected to maintain the strictest confidence. She must be well educated, especially in languages and literature, and she must have no ties of any kind or business which can interrupt or distract her attention from the serious course of training which it will be necessary for her to pursue. This Advertisement cannot be answered by letter. Each applicant must present herself personally and alone between the hours of 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays only to

“DR. FÉODOR DIMITRIUS,
“Château Fragonard,
“Geneva.”

The more Diana studied this singular announcement, the more remarkable and fascinating did it seem. The very hours named as the only suitable ones for interviewing applicants, between six and eight in the morning, were unusual enough, and the whole wording of the advertisement implied something mysterious and out of the common.

“Though I dare say it is, as Sophy suggests, only a snare of some sort,” she thought. “And yet to me it sounds genuine. But I don’t think this Dr. Féodor Dimitrius will get the kind of woman he wants easily. A handsome salary with board and lodging are tempting enough, but few women would be inclined to ‘take risks’ in the inventions and discoveries of modern science. Some of them are altogether too terrible!”

She read the advertisement carefully through again, then rose and locked it away in her desk with Sophy Lansing’s letter. She glanced through the rest of her correspondence, which was not exciting,—one note asking for the character of a servant, another for the pattern of a blouse, and a third enclosing a recipe for a special sort of jam, “with love to your sweet kind mother!”

She put them all by, and stretching her arms languidly above her head, caught another glimpse of herself in the mirror. This time it was more satisfactory. Her hair, hanging down to her waist, was full of a brightness, made brighter just now by the sunlight streaming through the window, and her nun’s veiling “rest gown” had a picturesque grace in its white fall and flow which softened the tired look of her face and eyes into something like actual prettiness. The fair ghost of her lost youth peeped at her for a moment, awakening a smarting sense of regretful tears. A light tap at the door fortunately turned the current of her thoughts, and the maid Grace Laurie entered, bearing a dainty little tray with a cup of tea invitingly set upon it.

“I’ve just taken some tea to Mrs. May in her bedroom,” she said. “And I thought you’d perhaps like a cup.”

“You’re a treasure, Grace!”—and Diana sat down to the proffered refreshment. “What shall we all do when you go away to be married?”

Grace laughed and tossed her head.

“Well, there’s time enough for that, miss!” she replied. “He ain’t in no hurry, nor am I! You see when you’re married you’re just done for,—there’s no more fun. It’s drudge, wash, cook and sew for the rest of your days, and no way of getting out of it.”

Diana, sipping her tea, looked at her, smiling.

“If that’s the way you think, you shouldn’t marry,” she said.

“Oh yes, I should!” and Grace laughed again. “A woman like me wants a home and a man to work for her. I don’t care to be in service all my days,—I may as well wash and sew for a man of my own as for anybody else.”

“But you love him, don’t you?” asked Diana.

“Well, he isn’t much to love!” declared Grace, with twinkling eyes. “His looks wouldn’t upset anyone’s peace! I’ve never thought of love at all—all I want is to be warm and comfortable in a decent house with plenty to eat,—and a good husband is a man who can do that, and keep it going. As for loving, that’s all stuff and nonsense!—as I always say you should never care more for a man with your ’ed than you can kick off with your ’eels.”

This profound utterance had the effect of moving Diana to the most delightful mirth. She laughed and laughed again,—and her laughter was so sweet and fresh that it was like a little chime of bells. Her voice, as already hinted, was her great charm, and whether she laughed or spoke her accents broke the air into little bars of music.

“Oh, Grace, Grace!” she said, at last. “You are too funny for words! I must learn that wise saying of yours by heart! What is it? ‘Never care more for a man with your ’ed than you can kick off with your ’eels’?—Splendid! And you mean it?”

Grace nodded emphatically.

“Of course I mean it! It don’t do to care too much for a man,—he’s always a sort o’ spoilt babe, and what he gets easy he don’t care for, and what he can’t have he’s always crying, crying after. You’ll find that true, Miss Diana!”

The sparkle of laughter quenched itself in Diana’s eyes and left her looking weary.

“Yes—I daresay you are right,” she said—“quite right, Grace!” And looking up, she spoke slowly and rather sadly. “Perhaps it’s true—some people say it is—that men like bad women better than good,—and that if a woman is thoroughly selfish, vain and reckless, treating men with complete indifference and contempt, they admire her much more than if she were loving and faithful.”

“Of course!” assented Grace, positively. “Look at Mrs. Potter-Barney!—the one the halfpenny newspapers call the ‘beautiful Mrs. Barney’! I know a maid who was told by another maid that she got five hundred guineas for a kiss!—and Lady Wasterwick has had thousands of pounds for——”

Diana held up a hand,—she smiled still, but a trifle austerely.

“That will do, Grace!”

Grace coughed discreetly and subsided.

“Is mother still lying down?” then asked Diana.

“Yes, miss. She’ll be on her bed till the dinner dressing bell rings. And Mr. May’s asleep over his newspaper in the garden.”

Again Diana laughed her clear, pretty laugh. The somnolent habits of her parents were so enlivening, and made home-life so cheerful!

“Well, all right, Grace,” she said. “If there’s nothing for me to do I shall go for a walk presently. So you’ll know what to say if I’m asked for.”

Grace assented, and then departed. Diana finished her cup of tea in meditative mood,—then, resolving to throw her retrospective thoughts to the winds, prepared to go out. It was an exceptionally fine afternoon, warm and brilliant, and instead of her navy linen gown which had seen considerable wear and tear, she put on a plain white one which became her much better than the indigo blue, and, completing her costume with a very simple straw hat and white parasol, she went downstairs and out of the house into the garden. She had meant to avoid her father, whom she saw on the lawn, under the spreading boughs of a cedar tree, seated in one rustic arm-chair, with his short legs comfortably disposed on another, and the day’s newspaper modestly spread as a coverlet over his unbuttoned waistcoat,—but an inquisitive wasp happening to buzz too near his nose he made a dart at it with one hand, and opening his eyes, perceived her white figure moving across the grass.

“Who’s that? What’s that?” he called out, sharply. “Don’t glide about like a ghost! Is it you, Diana?”

“Yes,—it’s me,” she replied, and came up beside him.

He gave her a casual look,—then sniffed and smiled sardonically.

“Dear me! How fine we are! I thought it was some young girl of the neighbourhood leaving cards on your mother! Why are you wearing white? Going to a wedding?”

Diana coloured to the roots of her pretty hair.

“It’s one of my washing frocks,” she submitted.

“Oh, is it? Well, I like to see you in dark colours—they are more suited to—to your age. Only very young people should wear white.”

He yawned capaciously. “Only very young people,” he repeated, closing his eyes. “Try and remember that.”

“Mrs. Ross-Percival wears white,” said Diana, quietly. “You are always holding her up to admiration. And she’s sixty, if she’s a day.”

Mr. Polydore May opened his eyes and bounced up in his chair.

“Mrs. Ross-Percival is a very beautiful woman!” he snapped out. “One of the beautiful women of society. And she’s married.”

“Oh, yes, she’s a grandmother,” murmured Diana, smiling. “But you don’t tell her not to wear white.”

“Good God, of course not! It’s no business of mine! What are you talking about? She’s not my daughter!”

Diana laughed her pretty soft laugh.

“No, indeed! Poor Pa! That would be terrible!—she’d make you seem so old if she were! But perhaps you wouldn’t mind as she’s so beautiful!”

Mr. May stared at her wrathfully with the feeling that he was being made fun of.

“She is beautiful!” he said, firmly. “Only a jealous woman would dare to question it!”

Diana laughed again.

“Very well, she is beautiful! Wig and all!” she said, and moved away, opening her parasol as she passed from the shadow of the cedar boughs into the full sun.

“She’s getting beyond herself!” thought her father, watching her as she went, and noting what he was pleased to consider “affectation” in her naturally graceful way of walking. “And if she once begins that sort of game, she’ll be unbearable! Nothing can be worse than an old maid who gets beyond herself or above herself! She’ll be fancying some man is in love with her next!”

He gave a snort of scorn and composed himself to sleep again; meanwhile Diana had left the garden and was walking at an easy pace, which was swift without seeming hurried, down to the sea shore. It was very lovely there at this particular afternoon hour,—the tide was coming in, and the long shining waves rolled up one after the other in smooth lines of silver on sand that shone in wet patches like purest gold. The air was soft and warm but not oppressive, and as the solitary woman lifted her eyes to the peaceful blue sky arched like a sheltering dome above the peaceful blue sea, her solitude was for the moment more intensified. More keenly than ever she felt that there was no one to whom she could look for so much as a loving word,—not in her own home, at any rate. Her friends were few; Sophy Lansing was one of the most intimate,—but Sophy lived such a life of activity, throwing her energies into so many channels, that it was not possible to get into very close or constant companionship with her.

“While I live,” she said to herself, deliberately, “I shall have no one to care for me—I must make up my mind to that. And when I die,—if I go to heaven there will be no one there who cares for me,—and, if I go to hell, no one there either!” She laughed at this idea, but there were tears in her eyes. “It’s curious not to have anyone on earth or in heaven or hell who wants you! I wonder if there are many like that! And yet—I’ve never done anything wicked or spiteful to deserve being left so unloved.”

She had come to a small, deep cove, picturesquely walled in by high masses of rock whose summits were gay with creeping plants, grass and flowers, and though the sea was calm, the pressure of the incoming tide through the narrow inlet made waves that were almost boisterous, as they rushed in and out with a musical splash and roar. It was hardly safe or prudent to walk further on. “Any of those waves could carry one off one’s feet in a minute,” she thought, and went upwards from the beach beyond the highest mark left by the fringes of the sea, where the fragments of an old broken boat made a very good seat. Here she rested awhile, allowing vague ideas of a possible future to drift through her brain. The prospect of a visit to Sophy Lansing seemed agreeable enough,—but she very well knew that it would be opposed by her parents,—that her mother would say she could not spare her,—and that her father would demand angrily:

“What have I taken this seaside house for? Out of pure good-nature and unselfishness, just to give you and your mother a summer holiday, and now you want to go away! That’s the way I’m rewarded for my kindness!”

If anyone had pointed out that he had only thought of himself and his own convenience in taking the “seaside house,” and that he had chosen it chiefly because it was close to the golf links and also to the Club, where there was a billiard-room, and that his “women folk” were scarcely considered in the matter at all, he would have been extremely indignant. He never saw himself in any other light but that of justice, generosity and nobility of disposition. Diana knew his “little ways,” and laughed at them though she regretted them.

“Poor Pa!” she would sigh. “He would be so much more lovable if he were not quite so selfish. But I suppose he can’t help it.”

And, on turning all the pros and cons over in her mind, she came to the conclusion that it would not be fair to leave her mother alone to arrange all the details of daily life in a strange house and strange neighbourhood where the tradespeople were not accustomed to the worthy lady’s rather vague ideas of domestic management, such as the ordering of the dinner two hours before it ought to be cooked, and other similar trifles, resulting in kitchen chaos.

“After all, I ought to be very contented!” and lifting her head, she smiled resignedly at the placid sea. “It’s lovely down here,—and I can always read a good deal,—and sew,—I can finish my bit of tapestry,—and I can master that wonderful new treatise on Etheric Vibration——”

Here something seemed to catch her breath,—she felt a curious quickening thrill as though an “etheric vibration” had touched her own nerves and set them quivering. Some words of the advertisement she had lately read sounded on her ears as though spoken by a voice close beside her:

“She must have a fair knowledge of modern science and must not shrink from dangerous experiments, or be afraid to take risks in the pursuit of discoveries which may be beneficial to the human race.”

She rose from her seat a little startled, her cheeks flushing with the stir of some inexplicable excitement in her blood.

“How strange that I should think of that just now!” she said. “I wonder”—and she laughed—“I wonder whether I should suit Dr. Féodor Dimitrius!”

The idea amused her,—it was so new,—so impracticable and absurd! Yet it remained in her mind, giving sparkle to her eyes and colour and animation to her face as she walked slowly home in a sort of visionary reverie.

CHAPTER III

Within a very few days of their “settling down” at Rose Lea, everybody in the neighbourhood,—that is to say, everybody of “county” standing—that height of social magnificence—had left their cards on Mr. and Mrs. Polydore May. They had, of course, previously made the usual private “kind inquiries,”—first as to the newcomers’ financial position, and next as to their respectability, and both were found to be unimpeachable. One of the most curious circumstances in this curious world is the strictness with which certain little bipeds inquire into the reported life and conduct of other little bipeds, the inquisitors themselves being generally the most doubtful characters.

“Funny little man, that Mr. May!” said the woman leader of the “hunting set,” who played bridge all day and as far into the night as she could. “Like a retired tradesman! Must have sold cheese and butter at some time of his life!”

“Oh, no!” explained a male intimate, whose physiognomy strangely resembled that of the fox he chased all the winter. “He made his pile in copper.”

“Oh, did he? Then he’s quite decent?”

“Quite!”

“That daughter of his——”

Here a snigger went round the “county” company. They were discussing the new arrivals at their afternoon tea.

“Poor old thing!”

“Must be forty if she’s a day!”

“Oh, give the dear ‘girl’ forty-five at least!” said a Chivalrous Youth, declining tea, and helping himself to a whisky-soda at the side-board.

“They say she was jilted.”

“No wonder!” And a bleating laugh followed this suggestion.

“I suppose,” remarked one man of gloomy countenance and dyspeptic eye, “I suppose it’s really unpardonable for a woman to get out of her twenties and remain unmarried, but if it happens so I don’t see what’s to be done with her.”

“Smother her!” said the Chivalrous Youth, drinking his whisky.

Everybody laughed. What a witty boy he was!—no wonder his mother was proud of him!

“We shall have to ask her to one or two tennis parties,” said the woman who had first spoken. “We can’t leave her out altogether.”

“She doesn’t play,” said the gloomy man. “She told me so. She reads Greek.”

A shrill chorus of giggles in falsetto greeted this announcement.

“Reads Greek! How perfectly dreadful! A blue-stocking!”

“No! Really! It’s too weird!” exclaimed the bridge-and-hunting lady. “I hope she’s not an ‘art’ person?”

“No.” And the gloomy man began to be cheerful, seeing that his talk had awakened a little interest. “No, not at all. She told me she liked pictures, but hated artists. I said she couldn’t have pictures without artists, and she agreed, but observed that fortunately all the finest pictures of the world were painted by artists who were dead. Curious way of putting it!”

“Going off it?” queried the Chivalrous Youth, having now drained his tumbler of drink.

“No, I don’t think so. The fact is—er—she—well, she appeared to me to be rather—er—clever!”

Clever? Oh, surely not! The “county” dames almost shuddered. Clever? She couldn’t be, you know!—not with that spoilt old-young sort of face! And her hair! All dyed, of course! And her voice was very affected, wasn’t it? Yes!—almost as if she were trying to imitate Sarah Bernhardt! So stupid in a woman of her age! She ought to know better!

So the little vicious, poisonous, gossiping mouths jabbered and hissed about the woman who was “left” like a forgotten apple on a bough to wither and drop unregarded to the ground. No one had anything kind to say of her. It mattered not at all that they were not really acquainted with her personally or sufficiently to be able to form an opinion,—the point with these precious sort of persons was, and always is, that an unwanted feminine nonentity had arrived in the neighbourhood who was superfluous, and therefore likely to be tiresome.

“One can always leave her out of a dinner invitation,” said one woman, thoughtfully. “It will be quite enough to ask Mr. and Mrs.”

“Oh, quite!”

Thus it was settled; meanwhile Diana, happily unconscious of any discussion concerning her, went on the even tenor of her way, keeping house for her parents, reading her favourite authors, studying her “scientific” subjects, and working at her tapestry without any real companionship save that of books and her own thoughts, and the constant delight she had in the profusion of flowers with which the gardens of Rose Lea abounded. These she arranged with exquisite taste and effect in the various rooms, so artistically that on one occasion the vicar of the parish, quite a dull, unimaginative man, was moved, during an afternoon call, to compliment Mrs. Polydore May on the remarkable grace with which some branches of roses were grouped in a vase on the table. Mrs. May looked at them sleepily and smiled.

“Very pretty, yes!” she murmured. “I used to arrange every flower myself, but now my daughter Diana does it for me. You see she can give her time to it,—she has nothing else to do.”

The vicar smiled the usual smile of polite agreement to everything which always gives a touch of sickliness to the most open countenance, and said no more. Diana was not present, so she did not hear that her mother considered she “had nothing else to do” but arrange flowers. Even if she had heard it, she would hardly have contradicted it; it was one of those things which she would not have thought worth while arguing about. The fact that she governed all the domestic working of the house so that it ran like a perfectly-going machine on silent and well-oiled wheels, required no emphasis,—at least, not in her opinion,—and though she knew that not one of the servants would have stayed in Mrs. May’s service or put up with her vague, fussy, and often sulky disposition, unless she, Diana, had “managed” them, she took no credit to herself for the comfortable and well-ordered condition of things under which her selfish old parents enjoyed their existence. That she “had nothing else to do but arrange flowers” was a sort of house tradition with “Pa” and “Ma” through which they found all manner of excuse for saddling her with as much work as they could possibly give her in the way of constant attendance on themselves. But she did not mind. She was obsessed by the “Duty” fetish, which too often makes prisoners and slaves of those who should be free. Like all virtues, devotion to duty can become a vice if carried to excess, and it is unquestionably a vice when it binds unselfish souls to unworthy and tyrannical taskmasters.

The summer moved on in shining weeks of sunlight and still air, and Rose Lea lost nothing of its charm for Diana, despite the taint of the commonplace with which the eating and sleeping silkworm-lives of her parents invested it. Now and then a few visitors came from London,—men and women of the usual dull type, bringing no entertainment in themselves, and whose stay only meant a little more expenditure and a more lavish display of food. One or two portly club friends of James Polydore came to play golf and drink whisky with him, and they condescended to converse with Diana at meals, because, perforce, they thought they must,—but meals being over, they gave her no further consideration, except to remark casually one to another: “Pity old Polydore couldn’t have got that daughter off his hands!” And the long, lovely month of August was nearly at its end when an incident happened which, like the small displacement of earth that loosens an avalanche, swept away all the old order of things, giving place to a new heaven and a new earth so far as Diana was concerned.

It had been an exceedingly warm day, and nightfall was more than usually welcome after the wide glare of the long, sunlit hours. Dinner was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Polydore May, fed to repletion and stimulated by two or three glasses of excellent champagne, were resting in a dolce-far-niente condition, each cushioned within a deep and luxurious arm-chair placed on either side of the open French windows of the drawing-room. The lawn in front of them was bathed in a lovely light reflected from the after-glow of the vanished sun and a pale glimmer from the risen half-moon, which hung in soft brilliance over the eastern half of the quiet sea. Diana had left her parents to their after-dinner somnolence, and was walking alone in the garden, up and down a grass path between two rose hedges. She was within call should she be wanted by either “Pa” or “Ma,” but they were not aware of her close proximity. Mr. May was smoking an exceptionally choice cigar,—he was in one of his “juvenile” moods, and for once was not inclined to take his usual “cat-nap” or waking doze. He had been to a tennis party that afternoon and had worn, with a “young man’s fancy” a young man’s flannels, happily unconscious of the weird appearance he presented in that unsuitable attire,—and, encouraged by the laughter and applause of the more youthful players, who looked upon him as the “comic man” of the piece, he had acquitted himself tolerably well. So that for the moment he had cast off the dignity and weight of years, and the very air with which he smoked his cigar, flicking off the burnt ash now and again in the affected style of a “young blood about town,” expressed the fact that he considered himself more than a merely “well-preserved” man, and that if justice were done him he would be admitted to be “a violet in the youth of primy nature.”

His better-half was not in quite such pleasant humour; she was self-complacent enough, but the heat of the day had caused her to feel stouter and more unwieldy than usual, and inclined to wish:

“Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw and dissolve itself into a dew!”

When her husband lit his cigar, she had closed her eyes, thinking: “Now there will be a little peace!” knowing that a good cigar to an irritable man is like the bottle to a screaming baby. But Mr. May was disposed to talk, just as he was disposed to admire the contour of his little finger whenever he drew his cigar from his mouth or put it back again.

“There were some smart girls playing tennis to-day,” he presently remarked. “One of them I thought very pretty. She was about seventeen.”

His wife yawned expansively. She made no comment.

“She was my partner,” went on Mr. May. “As skittish as you please!”

Mrs. May cuddled herself together among her cushions. The slightest glimmer of a smile lifted the corners of her pursy mouth towards her parsimonious nose. Her husband essayed once more the fascinating “flick” of burnt ash from his cigar.

“They’d have been as dull as a sermon at tea-time if it hadn’t been for me,” he resumed. “You see, I kept the ball rolling.”

“Naturally!—it’s tennis,” murmured his wife, drowsily.

“Don’t be a fool, Margaret! I mean I keep people amused.”

“I’m sure you do!” his “Margaret” agreed, as she smothered another yawn. “You’re the most amusing man I know!”

“Glad you admit it!” he said, captiously. “Not being amusing yourself, you ought to thank God you’ve got an amusing husband!”

This time Mrs. May emitted a bleating giggle.

“I do!”

“Now if it were not for Diana——”

His wife opened her eyes.

“What about Diana?”

“Well—Diana—put it how you like, but she’s Diana. She’ll never be anything else! Our daughter, oh, yes!—I know all that!—hang sentiment! Everybody calls her an old maid—and she’s in the way.”

A light-footed figure pacing up and down the grass walk, unseen between the two rose hedges close by, came to a sudden pause—listening.

“She’s in the way,” repeated Mr. May, with somewhat louder emphasis. “Unmarried women of a certain age always are, you know. You can’t class them with young people, and they don’t like being parcelled off with old folks. They’re out of it altogether unless they’ve got something to do which takes them away from their homes and saves them from becoming a social nuisance. They’re superfluous. ‘How is your daughter?’ the women here ask me, with a kind of pitying smile, as though she had the plague, or was recovering from small-pox. To be a spinster over thirty seems to them a kind of illness.”

“Well, it’s an illness that cannot be cured with Diana now!” sighed Mrs. May. “Quite hopeless!”

“Quite.” And her husband gave his chronic snort of ill-tempered defiance. “It’s a most unfortunate thing—especially for me. You see, when I go about with a daughter like Diana, it makes me seem so old!”

“And me!” she interposed. “You talk only of yourself,—don’t forget me!”

Mr. May laughed—a short, sardonic laugh.

“You! My dear Margaret, I don’t wish to be unkind, but really you needn’t worry yourself on that score! Surely you don’t suppose you’ll ever look young again? Think of your size, Margaret!—think of your size!”

Somewhat roused from her customary inertia by this remark, Mrs. May pulled herself up in her chair with an assumption of dignity.

“You are very coarse, James,” she said—“very coarse indeed! I consider that I look as young as you do any day,—I ought to, for you are fully eight years my senior—I daresay more, for I doubt if you gave your true age when I married you. You want to play the young man, and you only make yourself ridiculous,—I have no wish to play the young woman, but certainly Diana, with her poor, thin face—getting so many wrinkles, too!—does make me seem older than I am. She has aged terribly the last three or four years.”

“She’ll never see forty again,” said Mr. May, tersely.

Mrs. May rolled up her eyes in pained protest.

“Why say it?” she expostulated. “You only give yourself and me away! We are her parents!”

“I don’t say it in public,” he replied. “Catch me! But it’s true. Let me see!—why, Diana was born in——”

His wife gave an angry gesture.

“Never mind when she was born!” she said, with a tremble as of tears in her voice. “You needn’t recall it! Our only child!—and she has spoilt her life and mine too!”

A faint whimper escaped her, and she put a filmy handkerchief to her eyes.

Mr. May took no notice. For women’s tears he had a sovereign contempt.

“The fact is,” he said, judicially, “we ought to have trained her to do something useful. Nursing, or doctoring, or dressmaking, or type-writing. She would have had her business to attend to, which would have kept her away from Us,—and I—we—could have gone about free as air. We need never have mentioned that we had a daughter.”

Mrs. May looked scrutinizingly at her lace handkerchief. She remembered it had cost a couple of guineas, and now there was a hole in it. She must tell Diana to mend it. With this thought uppermost in her always chaotic mind, she said between two long-drawn sighs:

“After all, James, poor Diana does her best. She is very useful in the house.”

“Stuff and nonsense! She does nothing at all! She spoils the servants, if that is what you mean,—allows them to have their own way a great deal too much, in my opinion! It amuses her to play at housekeeping.”

“She doesn’t play at it,” remonstrated Mrs. May, weakly endeavouring to espouse the cause of justice. “She is very earnest and painstaking about it, and does it very well. She keeps down expenses, and saves me a great deal of worry.”

“Hm-m-m!” growled her husband. “It would do you good to be worried a bit! Take down your weight! Of course, what can’t be cured must be endured, but I’ve spoken the brutal truth,—Diana, at her age, and with her looks, and all her chances of marriage gone, is in the way. For instance, suppose I go to a new neighbour’s house, and I’m asked ‘Have you any family?’—I reply: ‘Yes, one daughter.’ Then some fool of a woman says: ‘Oh, do bring your girl with you next time!’ Well, she’s not a ‘girl.’ I don’t wish to say she’s not, but if I do take her with me ‘next time,’ everybody is surprised. You see, when they look at me, they expect my daughter to be quite a young person.”

Mrs. May sank gradually back in her chair, as though she were slowly pushed by an invisible finger.

“Do they?” The query was almost inaudible.

“Of course they do! And upon my soul, it’s rather trying to a man! You ought to sympathise, but you don’t!”

“Well, I really can’t see what’s to be done!” she murmured, closing her eyes in sheer weariness. “Diana cannot help getting older, poor thing!—and she’s our child——”

“Don’t I know she’s our child?” he snapped out. “What do you keep on telling me that for?”

“Why, I mean that you can’t turn her out of the house, or say you don’t want her, or anything of that sort. But I’m sure”—here, the round, pale eyes opened appealingly over the buff-coloured cheeks—“I’m sure, James, that if you don’t wish to take her out with you she’d never dream of expecting you to do so. She’s very unselfish,—besides, she’s so happy with her books.”

“Books—books!—hang books!” he exclaimed, irascibly. “There’s another drawback! If there’s one thing people object to more than another, it’s a bookish spinster! Any assumption of knowledge in a woman is quite enough to keep her out of society!”

His wife yawned.

“I dare say!” she admitted. “But I can’t help it.”

“You want to go to sleep,—that’s what you want!” said Mr. May, contemptuously. “Well, sleep!—I’m going over to the Club.”

She murmured an inward “Thank God!” and settled down in her chair to her deferred and much desired doze. Mr. May threw on his cap,—one of a jaunty shape, which he fondly imagined gave him the look of a dashing sportsman of some thirty summers—and stepped out on to the now fully moonlit lawn, crossing it at as “swinging” a pace as his little legs would allow him, and making for the high road just outside the garden gates.

Not till he had disappeared did the figure which had stayed statuesquely still between the two rose hedges show any sign of movement. Then it stirred, its dark grey draperies swaying like mist in a light wind. The bright moonlight fell on its uplifted face,—Diana’s face, pale always, but paler than ever in that ghostly radiance from the skies. She had heard all,—and there was a curious sense of tightening pain in her throat and round her heart, as if an overflow of tears or laughter struggled against repression. She had stood in such a motionless attitude of strained attention that her limbs felt cramped and stiff, so that when she began to walk it was almost with difficulty. She turned her back to the house and went towards the sea, noiselessly opening the little white gate that led to the shore. She was soon on the smooth soft sand where the little wet pools glittered like silver in the moon, and, going to the edge of the sea, she stood awhile, watching wave after wave glide up in small, fine lines and break at her feet in a delicate fringe of snowy foam. She was not conscious of any particularly keen grief or hurt feeling at the verdict of her general tiresomeness which her parents had passed upon her,—her thoughts were not in any way troubled; she only felt that the last thing she had clung to as giving value to life,—her affection and duty towards the old people,—was counted as valueless,—she was merely “in the way.” Watching the waves, she smiled,—a pitiful little smile.

“Poor old dears!” she said, tenderly,—and again: “Poor old dears!”

Then there arose within her another impulse,—a suggestion almost wildly beautiful,—the idea of freedom! No one wanted her,—not even her father or her mother. Then was she not at liberty? Could she not go where she liked? Surely! Just as a light globe of thistledown is blown by the wind to fall where it will, so she could drift with the movement of casual things anywhere,—so long as she troubled nobody by her existence.

“The world is wide!” she said, half-aloud, stretching her arms with an unconscious gesture of appeal towards the sea. “I have stayed too long in one small corner of it!”

The little waves plashed one upon the other with a musical whisper as though they agreed with her thought,—and yet—yet there was something appalling in the utter loneliness of her heart. No one loved her,—no one wanted her! She was “in the way.” Smarting tears filled her eyes,—but they angered her by their confession of weakness, and she dashed them away with a quick, defiant hand. She began to consider her position coldly and critically. Her thoughts soon ranged themselves in order like obedient soldiers at drill under their commanding officer,—each in its place and ready for action. It was useless to expect help or sympathy from anyone,—she would not get it. She must stand alone. It is perhaps a little hard and difficult to stand alone when one is a woman; it used to be considered cruel and pitiful, but in these days it has become such a matter of course that no one thinks about it or cares. The nature and temperament of woman as God made her, have not altered; with all her “advancement,” she is just as amative, as credulous, as tender, as maternal as ever she was, longing for man’s love as her “right,” which it is, and becoming hardened and embittered when this right is withheld from her,—but the rush of the time is too swift and precipitous for any display of masculine chivalry on her behalf; she has elected to be considered co-equal with man, and she is now, after a considerable tussle, to be given her “chance.” What she will make of the long-deferred privilege remains a matter of conjecture.

Slowly, and with a vague reluctance, Diana turned away from the moonlit sea; the murmur of the little waves followed her, like suggestive whispers. A curious change had taken place in her mentality during the last few minutes. She, who was accustomed to think only of others, now thought closely and consistently of herself. She moved quietly towards the house, gliding like a grey ghost across the lawn which showed almost white in the spreading radiance of the moon,—the drawing-room windows were still open, and Mrs. May was still comfortably ensconced in her arm-chair, sleeping soundly and snoring hideously. Her daughter came up and stood beside her, quite unobserved. Nothing could have been more unlovely than the aspect she presented, sunk among the cushions, a mere adipose heap, with her fat cheeks, small nose and open mouth protruding above the folds of a grey woollen shawl which was her favourite evening wear, her resemblance to a pig being more striking than pleasing. But Diana’s watching face expressed nothing but the gentlest solicitude.

“Poor mother!” she sighed to herself. “She’s tired! And—and of course, it’s natural she should be disappointed in me. I’ve not been a success! Poor dear mother! God bless her!”

She went out of the room noiselessly, and made her way upstairs. She met Grace Laurie.

“I’m going to bed, Grace,” she said. “I’ve got a tiresome headache, and shall be better lying down. If mother wants to know where I am, will you tell her?”

“Yes, miss. Can I do anything for you?” Grace asked, for, as she often said afterwards, she “thought Miss Diana looked a bit feverish.”

“No, thanks very much!” Diana answered in her sweet-voiced, pleasant manner. “Bed is the best place for me. Good-night!”

“Good-night, miss.” And Diana entering her own room, locked the door. She was eager to be alone. Her window was open, and she went to that and looked out. All was silent and calm; the night was beautiful. The sea spread itself out in gently heaving stretches of mingled light and shade, and above it bent a sky in which the moon’s increasing splendour swamped the sparkling of the stars. The air was very still,—not a leaf on any small branch of tree or plant stirred. The scent of roses and sweet-briar and honeysuckle floated upwards like incense from the flower altars of the earth.

“I am free!” murmured Diana to the hushed night. “Free!”

And then, turning, she saw herself in the mirror, as she had already seen herself that day,—only with a greater sense of shock. The evening gown she wore, chosen to please her father’s taste, of dull, dowdy-grey chiffon, intensified her worn and “ageing” look; the colour of her hair was deadened by contrast with it, and in very truth she had at that moment a sad and deplorably jaded aspect.

“Free!” she repeated, in self-scorn. “And what is the use of freedom to me at my age!—and with my face and figure!”

She shrank from her own pitiful “double” in the glass,—it seemed asking her why she was ever born! Then, she put away all doleful thoughts that might weaken her or shake her already formed resolution:—“Nothing venture, nothing have!” she said. And, shutting her window, she drew the blinds and curtains close, so that no glimpse of light from her room might be seen by her father when he should cross the lawn on his return from the Club. She had plenty to do, and she began to do it. She had a clear plan in view, and as she said to herself, a trifle bitterly, she “was old enough” to carry it out. And when all her preparations were fully made and completed, she went to bed and slept peacefully till the first break of dawn.

CHAPTER IV

When morning came it brought with it intense heat and an almost overpowering glare of sunshine, and Mr. James Polydore May, stimulated by the warm atmosphere, went down to breakfast in a suit of white flannels. Why not? A sportive and youthful spirit had entered into him with his yesterday’s experience of tennis, and his “skittish-as-you-please” partner of seventeen; and, walking with a jaunty step, he felt that there was, and could be, no objection to the wearing of white, as far as he was concerned. But—had he not said on the previous day to his daughter, “Only very young people should wear white?” Ah, yes—his daughter, as a woman, was too old for it! ... but he,—why, if the latest scientific dictum is correct, namely, that a man is only as old as his arteries, then he, James Polydore May, was convinced that arterially speaking, he was a mere boy! True, his figure was a little “gone” from its original slimness,—but plenty of golf and general “bracing-up” would soon put that all right, so that even the “skittish-as-you-please” young thing might not altogether despise his attentions. Whistling gaily the charming tune of “Believe me if all those endearing young charms,” he contemplated the well set out breakfast table with satisfaction. He was first in the field that morning, and his better half had not been at the fried bacon before him, selecting all the best bits as was her usual custom. He sat down to that toothsome dish and helped himself bountifully; then, missing the unobtrusive hand which generally placed his cup of tea beside him, he called to the parlour-maid:

“Where’s Miss Diana? Isn’t she up?”

“Oh, yes, sir. She was up very early—about six, I believe,—and she went down to the cove to bathe, so she told the kitchen-maid.”

“Not back yet?”

“No, sir.”

Mr. May pulled out his watch and glanced at it. It was half-past nine. At that moment his wife entered the room.

“Oh, you’re out of bed at last!” he said. “Well, now you can pour out my tea and mind you don’t fill the cup too full. Diana hasn’t got back from her dip.”

Mrs. May was still rather sleepy, and, as usual, more or less inattentive to her husband’s remarks. She began turning over the letters the post had just brought for her, whereat Mr. May gave a sharp rap on the table with the handle of a fork.

“My tea!” he repeated. “D’ye hear? I want my tea!”

Mrs. May rolled her pale eyes at him protestingly as she lifted the teapot.

“I hear perfectly,” she answered with an assumption of dignity. “And please be civil! You can’t bully me as you bully Diana.”

“I bully Diana! I!” And Mr. May gave a short, scornful laugh. “Come, I like that! Why, the woman doesn’t know what bullying is! She’s had a path of roses all her life—roses, I tell you! Never a care,—never a worry,—no financial difficulties—always enough to eat, and a comfortable home to live in. What more can she want? Bully, indeed! If she had married that confounded officer for whom she wasted the best seven years of her life, then she’d have known something about bullying! Rather! And I daresay it ’ud have done her good. Better than being an old maid, anyhow.”

Mrs. May handed him his tea across the table.

“I wonder where she is?” she questioned, plaintively. “I’ve never known her so late before.”

“Went out at six,” said Mr. May, with his mouth full of bacon. “The kitchen-maid saw her go.”

Mrs. May rang a small hand-bell at her side.

The parlour-maid answered it.

“Hasn’t Miss Diana come in?”

“No, ’m.”

Mrs. May rubbed her small nose perplexedly.

“Who saw her go out?”

“The kitchen-maid, ’m. She was cleaning the doorstep when Miss Diana came out, and said she was going for a sea bath. That was about six o’clock, ’m.”

Again Mrs. May rubbed her nose.

“Send Grace here.”

“Yes, ’m.”

Another minute, and Grace Laurie appeared.

“Grace, did you see Miss Diana go out this morning?”

“No, ’m. Last night I met her on the stairs, and she said she had a headache and was going to bed early. I haven’t seen her since.”

“Good heavens, Margaret, what a fuss you’re making!” here exclaimed Mr. May. “One would think she’d been carried off in an aeroplane! Surely she’s old enough to take care of herself! She’s probably gone for a walk after bathing, and forgotten the time.”

“That’s not like Miss Diana, sir,” ventured Grace, respectfully. “She never forgets anything.”

“Another cup of tea, Margaret, and look sharp!” interposed Mr. May, testily.

Mrs. May sighed, and poured hot water into the tea-pot. Then she addressed Grace in a low tone.

“Ask the kitchen-maid just what Miss Diana said.”

Grace retired, and returned again quickly.

“Miss Diana came down at about six this morning,” she said. “And Jenny, the kitchen-maid, was the only one of us up. She was cleaning the doorstep, and moved her pail for Miss Diana to pass. Miss Diana had on her navy blue serge and black straw sailor hat, and she carried what Jenny thought were her bathing things hanging over her arm. She was very bright and said: ‘Good-morning, Jenny! I’m going for a dip in the sea before the sun gets too hot.’ And so she went.”

“And so she went—Amen!” said Mr. May, biting a hard bit of toast noisily. “And so she’ll come back, and wonder what all the deuced fuss is about. As if a woman of her age couldn’t go for a bath and a walk without being inquired after as if she were a two-year-old! Are you going to have your breakfast, Margaret?—or do you prefer to read your letters first?”

His wife made no reply. She was watching the boiling of an egg in a small, specially constructed vessel for the purpose, which Diana had added to the conveniences of the breakfast table. She was annoyed that Diana herself was not there to attend to it. Diana always knew when the egg was done to a turn. Grace still lingered in the room. Mrs. May, languidly raising her fish-like eyes, saw her.

“You can go, Grace.”

“Yes, ’m. Shall I just run out to the shore and see if Miss Diana is coming?”

“Yes. And tell her to make haste back—I want her to do some shopping in the village for me.”

Grace left the room, closing the door behind her. A clock on the mantelpiece gave several little sharp ting-tings.

“What time is that?” asked Mrs. May.

“Ten o’clock,” replied her husband, unfolding the day’s newspaper and beginning to read.

“Dear me! How very extraordinary of Diana to be out from six in the morning till now!” And with the aid of a spoon she carefully lifted the egg she had been watching as though it were the most precious object in life out of the boiling water, in mournful doubt as to whether, after all, it really was done perfectly. “It’s so unlike her.”

“Well, you may be pretty certain no one has run away with her,” said Mr. May, ironically. “She’s safe enough. The ‘dear child’ has not eloped!”

Mrs. May ignored both his words and his manner. She looked at him meditatively over the lid of the silver teapot and permitted herself to smile,—a small, fat, pursy smile.

“Those white flannels have got rather tight for you, haven’t they?” she suggested.

He flushed indignantly.

“Tight? Certainly not! Do they look tight?”

“Well—just a little!—but of course white always makes one appear stout——”

“Stout! You talk about stoutness? You! Why, I’m a paper-knife compared to you!—a positive paper-knife! I believe you actually grudge my wearing white flannels!”

His wife laughed.

“Indeed, no!” she declared. “It amuses me! I rather like it!”

“I should think you did!” he retorted. “Or, if you don’t, you ought to!”

She surveyed him pensively with round, lacklustre eyes.

“What a long time it is!” she said—“What a long, long time since you were thin!—really quite thin, James! Do you remember? When you proposed to me in father’s dining-room and the parlour-maid came in and lit the gas, just as you were going to——”

“You seem very reminiscent this morning,” interrupted her husband, sharply. “Do white flannels move you to sentiment?”

“Oh, no!—not at all—not now!” she replied, with a small giggle. “Only one cannot but think of the change between then and now—it’s almost humorous——”

“I should think it is!” he agreed. “It’s more than humorous! It’s comic! What d’ye expect? When I think of what you were!—a nice little pink and white thing with a small waist,—and see you now!”—here he snorted half contemptuously. “But there!—we can’t all remain young, and you’re quite comfortable looking—a sort of pillow of ease,—you might be worse——”

Here their mutual personal compliments were interrupted by the hurried entrance of Grace Laurie, looking pale and scared.

“Oh ’m, I’m afraid some accident has happened to Miss Diana!” she said, breathlessly. “I’ve been all the way down to the cove, and—and——”

Here she suddenly burst out crying. Mr. May bounced up from his chair.

“Deuce take the woman!—don’t stand there grizzling! What’s the matter? Speak out!”

Mrs. May stared feebly, her mouth opening slowly, like that of a fish on dry land.

“What—what is it, Grace?” she stammered. “You frighten me!”

“Yes ’m, I know, but I can’t help it!” Grace answered, gaspingly. “But—but I’ve been down to the cove—and all round in every place, and there’s Miss Diana’s clothes all put together on the rocks, with her shoes and hat and bathing towel, but—but—there’s no Miss Diana!” Here her emotions got the better of her, and she gave a small scream. “Oh, oh! I’m sure she’s drowned!—oh, Miss Diana, poor thing! I’m sure she’s drowned!—she’s been carried off her feet by the waves!—there was a high tide this morning, and I know she’s drowned! She’s drowned, she’s drowned!”

Her voice rose to a high shrill pitch, and she wrung her hands.

Mrs. May struggled weakly out of her chair, and then dropped heavily into it again.

“Drowned! Diana! Don’t be foolish, Grace! It’s not possible!”

Mr. May seized his cap and threw it on his head.

“Here, I’ll soon put a stop to all this nonsense!” he said. “Let me get down to the cove,—what’s the good of a parcel of silly fools of women shrieking and crying before they know what’s happened!” He marched up to Grace Laurie and grasped her by the shoulder. “Now, be calm! Can you be calm?”

Grace caught her breath, and wriggled herself away from the nip of his fingers.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then, repeat what you said just now,—you went down to the cove and saw——”

“Miss Diana’s clothes,—all put by on the rocks, just as she always puts them out of the way when she’s going to bathe,” said Grace. “And her bathing towel,—that hasn’t been used. And her shoes and stockings. But Miss Diana’s gone!”

“Oh dear, oh dear!” moaned Mrs. May. “What dreadful, dreadful things you are saying! What are we to do? Oh, I feel so ill! My sweet Diana!—my only, only precious child! Oh, James, James!”

And with her face suddenly working up into all sorts of lines and creases as though it were an india-rubber mask pulled from behind, she began to weep slowly and tricklingly, like a tap with a stoppage in its middle.

“Be quiet!” shouted Mr. May fiercely. “You unnerve me with all this snivelling!—and I won’t be unnerved! I’m going myself to the cove—I’ll soon clear up this business! I don’t believe anything has happened to Diana,—it’s a fine morning, and she’s probably enjoying a swim,—she can swim like a fish—you know she can!—she couldn’t drown!”

And with a half-suppressed oath he trotted out, all fuss and feathers, like an angry turkey-cock, his whole mentality arrayed against fate and circumstance, resolved to show that he was stronger than either.

By this time the ill news had spread, and the servants, the gardeners, and a few of the villagers went running down to the cove. It was true there had been a high tide that morning,—there was yet the glistening trail of the loftiest wave on the rocks where the freshly tossed seaweed clung. Safe out of all possible reach of the water, and neatly piled together on a ledge of rock, were Diana’s simple garments, as Grace had said,—with her hat, stockings and shoes and the unused bathing towel. A veteran sailor had joined the group of onlookers, and now, drawing his pipe from his mouth, he asked:

“What time did the leddy coom down ’ere?”

Mr. May had by now lost a little of his self-assertiveness and was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. He was not a man of sentiment; though he could often feign emotion successfully enough to deceive the very elect. But just now he was, as he would himself have said, “very much upset.” He knew that he ought to appear to his own servants and to the villagers like a fond father distracted with anxiety and suspense, and he was aware that his dumpy figure in tight white flannels did not “dress” the part. He replied curtly:

“She was here a little before six, I’m told——”

“Ah, poor thing, then she’s been carried out of her depth!” said the old “salt.” “There’s a main deal o’ suction with the sea in this ’ere cove when full tide cooms in——”

“She’s an excellent swimmer,” said Mr. May, gazing at the sea in a vaguely disappointed way, as though he thought each wave that swept slowly in ought to bring Diana riding triumphantly on top of it.

“Ay, ay!—that may be!—but swimmin’ winnot allers save a woman what’s light weight an’ ain’t got the muscles of a man. There’s a force o’ water ’ere sometimes as ’ud sweep a cart an’ ’oss off like a bit o’ straw! Ay, ay!—she’s gone for sure! an’ mebbe her poor body’ll never come nigh—leastways not ’ere,—it might, lower down the coast.”

Here Grace Laurie, who was with the other servants watching, began to cry bitterly.

“Oh, Miss Diana!” she sobbed. “She was so good and kind! Oh, poor, dear Miss Diana!”

The old sailor patted her gently on the shoulder.

“Now don’t ye fret, don’t ye fret, my girl!” he said. “We’re all swept off our feet sooner or later, when the big tide cooms in!—some goes first an’ others last,—but ’tis all the same! Now you just pull yerself together an’ take the poor leddy’s clothes back ’ome—an’ I an’ my mates will watch all along shore, an’ if we hears anythin’ or finds anythin’——”

Mr. May coughed noisily.

“I am the father of the unfortunate lady,” he said stiffly. “I cannot yet believe or realise this—this awful business; but anything you can do will be suitably rewarded—of course——”

“Thanky, sir, thanky! I makes no doubt on’t!—but I’ll not worrit ye with the hows an’ the whens in yer sorrer, for sorrer ye must ’ave, for all ye looks so dry. What we ’ears we’ll let ye know an’ what we finds too——”

And he subsided into silence, watching Grace, who, with choked sobs and tears, took up Diana’s clothes as tenderly as if they were living objects. Some of the other servants wept too, out of sympathy, and Jonson, the butler, approached his master with solemn deference.

“Will you take my harm, sir?” he said.

Mr. May stared at him angrily,—then, remembering the circumstances, assumed a melancholy and resigned air.

“No, Jonson, thank you!” he answered. “I will walk home alone.” Then, after a pause. “You and Grace had better see to Mrs. May,—prepare her a little—it will be a terrible blow to her——”

He turned away, and as he went, the group of sight-seers went also, slowly dispersing and talking about the fatality in hushed voices, as though they were afraid the sea would hear.

The old sailor remained behind, smoking and watching the waves. Presently he saw something on the surface of the water that attracted his attention, and he went to the edge of the breaking surf and waited till the object was cast at his feet. It was a woman’s white canvas bathing shoe.

“Ay! ’Tother’ll mebbe come in presently,” he said. “Poor soul!—they’se washed off her feet,—she’s gone, for sure! I’ll keep this a bit—in case ’tother comes.”

And shaking it free from the sand and dripping water, he put it in his jacket pocket, and resumed his smoky meditations.

Meanwhile at Rose Lea the worst had been told. Mrs. May, weeping profusely, and tottering like a sack too full to stand upright, had been put to bed in a state bordering on collapse. Mr. May occupied himself in sending off telegrams and writing letters; two representatives of the local press called, asking for details of the “Shocking Bathing Fatality,” which they secured, first from the bereaved Mr. May himself, next from the butler, then from the maid, then from the cook, and then from the kitchen-maid, “who ’ad been the last to see the poor dear lady,” with the result that they had a sufficiently garbled and highly-coloured account to make an almost “sensational” column in their profoundly dull weekly newspaper.

The day wore on,—the house was invested with a strange silence; Diana’s presence, Diana’s busy feet tripping here and there on household business might have been considered trifling things; but the fact that she was no longer in evidence created a curious, empty sense of loneliness. Mrs. May remained in bed, moaning and weeping drearily, with curtains drawn to shut out the aggressively brilliant sunshine; and Mr. May began to take a mysterious pleasure in writing the letters which told his friends in London and elsewhere of his “tragic and irreparable loss.” He surprised himself by the beautiful sentences he managed to compose. “Our only darling child, who was so beloved and precious to us and to all who knew her”—was one. “I shall do my best to cheer and support my dear wife, who is quite prostrated by this awful calamity,” was another. “You know how dear she was and how deeply cherished!” was a third. Sometimes, while he was writing, a small twinge of conscience hurt the mental leather whereof he was largely composed, and he realised his own hypocrisy. He knew he was not really sorry for what had happened. And yet—memory pointed him backward with something of reproach to the day when Diana, a pretty and winsome child, with fair hair dancing about her in bright curls, had clambered on his knee and caressed his ugly face, as though it were an adorable object,—and to the after time, when as a girl in the fine bloom of early youth, she had gone with him to her first ball, sweet and fresh as the roses which adorned her simple white gown, and had charmed everyone by her grace, gentleness and exquisite speaking voice, which in its softly modulated tones, exercised a potent witchery on all who heard it. True,—she had missed all her chances,—or rather all her chances had somehow missed her; and she had grown not exactly old, but passée—and—it was a pity she had not married!—but now!—now all her failures and shortcomings were for ever at an end! She was drowned;—the sea had wedded her and set its salty weed among her hair in place of the never-granted orange-blossom. Mr. May shivered a little at this thought,—after all, the sea was a cold and cruel grave for his only child! And yet no tear of human or fatherly emotion generated itself out of his dry brain to moisten his hard little eyes. He stiffened himself in his chair and resumed the writing of his letters which announced the “sudden and awful bereavement” which had befallen him, and was charmed by the ease with which the tenderest expressions concerning his dead daughter flowed from his pen.

And, after a long, sobbing, snoring sleep, Mrs. May woke up to the practical every-day points of the situation and realised that there could be no funeral. This was an awful blow! Unless—unless the poor body of the drowned woman came ashore there could be no black procession winding its doleful way through the flowering lanes of the little Devonshire village, where it would have been picturesque to make a “show” of mourning. So far, the sea had cheated the undertaker.

“I cannot even put a wreath upon my darling’s coffin!” she moaned. “And she loved flowers!”

Fresh sobs and tears followed this new phase of misfortune. Mrs. May was accustomed to find balm in Gilead for the death of any friend by sending a wreath for the corpse,—and her husband had been heard to say that if he died first he would be sure to have “a nasty wet wreath laid on his chest before he was cold.”

Most of the burden and heat of the day fell on the maid, Grace Laurie, who had to take cups of soup, glasses of wine, and other strengthening refreshment to Mrs. May in her bedroom, and to see that Mr. May “had everything he wanted,” which is the usual rule of a house sustained by the presence of a man. She was an honest, warm-hearted girl, and was genuinely sorry for the loss of Diana, far more so than were the “bereaved” parents. Once, during the later afternoon, when it was verging towards sunset, she went to Diana’s room and entered it half trembling, moved by a sort of superstitious fear lest she should perhaps see the spirit of its late occupant. The window was open, and a rosy glow from the sky flushed the white muslin curtains with pale pink, and gave deeper colour to a posy of flowers in a vase on the dressing-table. Everything was scrupulously tidy; the servants had made the bed early in the morning, before the fatality had become known, and the whole room had an attractive air of peaceful expectation as though confident of its owner’s return. Grace opened the wardrobe,—there were all the few dresses Diana possessed, in their usual places, with two or three simple country hats. Was there anything missing? No sooner did this thought enter her head than Grace began to search feverishly. She opened drawers and boxes and cupboards,—but, so far as she knew, everything was as it always appeared to be. Yet she could not be quite sure. She was not Diana’s own maid, except by occasional service and favour,—her duties were, strictly speaking, limited to personal attendance on Mrs. May. Diana was accustomed to do everything for herself, arranging and altering her own clothes, and even making them sometimes, so that Grace never quite knew what she really had in the way of garments. But as she looked through all the things hurriedly, they seemed to be just what Diana had brought with her from Richmond for the summer, and no more. The clothes found on the sea-shore Grace had herself placed on one chair, all folded in a sad little heap together. She opened the small jewel-box that always stood on the dressing-table, and recognised everything in it, even to the wristlet-watch which Diana always left behind when she went to bathe; apparently there was nothing missing. For one moment a sudden thought had entered her head, that perhaps Diana had run away?—but she as quickly realised the absurdity of such an idea!

“How stupid of me!” she said. “She had no cause to run away.”

She looked round once again, sadly and hopelessly,—then went out and closed the door softly behind her. She felt there was a something mysterious and suggestive in that empty room.

Towards dinner-time Mrs. May struggled out of bed and sat up in an arm-chair, swathed in a voluminous dressing-gown.

“I cannot go down to dinner!” she wailed, to Grace. “The very idea of it is terrible! Tell Mr. May I want to speak to him.”

Grace obeyed, and presently Mr. May came in obedience to the summons, wearing a curious expression of solemn shamefacedness, as if he had done a mean trick some time and had just been found out. His wife gazed at him with red, watery eyes.

“James,” she said, quaveringly, “it’s dreadful to have to remember what you said last night about poor Diana!—oh, it’s dreadful!”

“What did I say?” he asked, nervously. “I—I forget——”

“You said—oh, dear, oh, dear! I hope God may forgive you!—you said Diana was ‘in the way!’ You did!—Our child! Oh, James, James! Your words haunt me! You said she was ‘in the way,’ and now she has been taken from us! Oh, what a punishment for your wicked words! And you a father! Oh, how shall we ever get over it!”

Mr. Polydore May sat down by his wife’s chair and looked foolish. He knew he ought to say that it was indeed a dreadful thing, and that of course they could never get over it,—but all the time he was perfectly aware that the “getting over it” would be an easy matter for them both. He had even already imagined it possible to secure a young and pretty “companion housekeeper” to assist Mrs. May in the cares of domestic management, and, when required, to wait upon James Polydore himself with all that deferential docility which should be easy to command for a suitable salary. That would be one way of “getting over it” quite pleasantly,—but in reply to his wife’s melancholy adjuration, he judged it wisest to be silent.

She went on, drearily:

“Fortunately I have one black dress; it belonged to my poor sister’s set of mourning for her husband, but as she married again and went to Australia within the year, it’s really as good as new, and she sold it to me for a pound. And Grace can alter my bonnet; it’s black, but it has a pink flower,—I must get a crape poppy instead, and black gloves,—Oh, James!—and you wore white flannels this morning!—I’m glad you’ve had the decency to change them!”

Mr. May had certainly changed them,—partly out of conviction that such change was necessary, and partly because Jonson, the butler, had most urgently suggested it. And he was now attired in his “regulation” Sunday suit, which gave him the proper appearance of a respectable J.P. in mourning. All day he had practised an air of pious resignation and reserved sadness;—it was difficult to keep it up because his nature was captious and irascible, especially when things happened that were opposed to his personal convenience and comfort. His efforts to look what he was not gave him the aspect of a Methodist minister disappointed in the silver collection.

But perhaps on the whole, his wife was a greater humbug than he was. She was one of those curious but not uncommon characters who imagine themselves to be “full of feeling,” when truly they have no feeling at all. Nobody could “gush” with more lamentable pathos than she over a calamity occurring to any of her friends or acquaintances, but no trouble had ever yet lessened her appetite, or deprived her of sleep. Her one aim in life was to seem all that was conventionally correct,—to seem religious, when she was not, to seem sorry, when she was not, to seem glad, when she was not, to seem kind, when she was not, to seem affectionate, when she was not. Her only real passions were avarice, tuft-hunting and gluttony,—these were the fundamental chords of her nature, hidden deep behind the fat, urbane mask of flesh which presented itself as a woman to the world. There are thousands like her, who, unfortunately, represent a large section of the matronhood of Britain.

The news of Diana’s sudden and sad end soon spread among the old and new friends and neighbours of the Polydore Mays, arousing languid comment here and there, such as: “Poor woman! But, after all, there wasn’t much for her in life—she was quite the old maid!” Or,—as at Mr. May’s club: “Best thing that could have happened for old Polydore!—he can’t trot her round any more, and he’ll be able to play the man-about-town more successfully!”

Nobody gave a thought to the quiet virtues of the industrious, patient, unaffected daughter who had devoted herself to the duty of caring for and attending upon her utterly selfish parents,—and certainly nobody ever remembered that her spinster-hood was the result of a too lofty and faithful conception of love, or that her nature was in very truth an exceptionally sweet and gracious one, and her intelligence of a much higher order than is granted to the average female. In that particular section of human beings among whom she had lived and moved, her career was considered useless because she had failed to secure a mate and settle down to bear the burden and brunt of his passions and his will. And so, as she had never displayed any striking talent, or thrust herself forward in any capacity, or shown any marked characteristic, and as the world is over full of women, she was merely one of the superfluous, who, not being missed, was soon forgotten.

CHAPTER V

On that same eminently tragic afternoon when Mr. Polydore May found it necessary to change his white flannels so soon after putting them on, and his wife had to think seriously of a crape poppy for her bonnet, two ladies sat in the charmingly arranged drawing-room of a particularly charming flat in Mayfair enjoying their afternoon tea. One was a graceful little woman arrayed in a captivating tea-gown; the other, a thin, rather worn-looking creature with a pale face and bright hair tucked closely away under a not very becoming felt hat, garbed in a severely plain costume of dark navy serge. The butterfly person in the tea-gown was Miss Sophy Lansing, a noted Suffragette, and the authoress of a brilliantly witty satire entitled “Adam and His Apple,” which, it was rumoured, had made even the Dean of St. Paul’s laugh. The tired-featured woman with the air of an intellectual governess out of place, was no other than the victim of the morning’s disastrous “death by drowning,”—Diana May. Dead in Devonshire, she was alive in London, and her friend, Sophy Lansing, was sitting beside her, clasping her hands in a flutter of delight, surprise and amusement all commingled.

“You dear!” she exclaimed. “How ever did you manage to get away? I never was so astonished! Or so pleased! When I got your note by express messenger, I could hardly believe my eyes! What time did you arrive in town?”

“About midday,” replied Diana. “I felt comfortably drowned by that time,—and I lunched at the Stores——”

“Drowned!” cried Sophy. “My dear, what do you mean?”

Diana released her hands from her friend’s eager grasp and took off her hat. There was a gleam of whimsical humour in her eyes.

“One moment, and I’ll explain everything,” she said. “But, first of all, let me tell you why I sent you a message in advance, instead of coming to you direct. It’s because I’m obliged for the present to be like a travelling royalty, incog. Your servants must not know my real name,—to them and to everybody else who sees me here, I’m Miss Graham,—not Miss May. Miss May is dead! As Peggotty says in ‘David Copperfield,’ she’s ‘drowndead.’ ‘Drowndead’ this very morning!”

She laughed; Sophy Lansing looked as she felt, utterly bewildered.

“You are a positive enigma, Diana!” she said. “Of course when I got your note I understood you had some reason or other for wishing to be incog., and I told my maids that I expected a friend to stay with me, a Miss Graham, and that she would come this afternoon,—so that’s all right! But about the drowning business——”

“You’ll see it mentioned, no doubt, in the papers to-morrow,” said Diana. “Under various headings: ‘Bathing Fatality’ or ‘Sad End of a Lady.’ And you’ll probably get a black-bordered letter from Ma, or Pa, or both!”

“Diana!” exclaimed Sophy, vehemently. “You are too provoking! Tell me all about it!—straight!”

“There’s not so very much to tell,” answered Diana, in her sweet, mellow accents, thrilled at the moment by a note of sadness. “Only that last night I had the final disillusion of my life—I found that my father and mother did not really love me——”

“Love you!” interrupted Sophy, heatedly. “You dear goose! There’s no such thing as love in their composition!”

“Maybe not,” said Diana. “But if there is, they’ve none to spare for me. You see, dear Sophy, it’s all the fault of my silly conceit,—I really thought I was useful, even necessary to the old people, and that they cared for me, but when I heard my father say most emphatically that I was ‘in the way,’ and my mother rather agreed to that, I made up my mind to relieve them of my presence. Which I have done. For ever!”

“For ever!” echoed Sophy. “My poor dear Diana——”

“No, I’m not a poor dear Diana,” she answered, smiling,—“I’m a dead and gone Diana! You will see me in the leading obituary columns of the newspapers to-morrow!”

“But how——”

“The how and the when and the why are thus!” and Diana played with the silken tassels of the girdle which belted in the dainty chiffon and lace of her friend’s tea-gown. “This very morning, as ever was, I went for my usual morning dip in the sea at a cove not a quarter of a mile away from the house. I knew that at a certain hour there would be a high tide, which, of course, on any other day I would have avoided. I went to the spot, dressed in two of everything——”

“Two of everything?” Sophy murmured bewilderedly.

“Yes, you pretty little thick-head! Two of everything! Don’t you see? Being as thin as a clothes’-prop, that was easy for me. Two ‘combys,’—two chemises, two petticoats, two serge gowns,—having no figure I wear no corsets, so I didn’t have two of those. Two pairs of knickers, two pairs of stockings,—one pair of shoes on, another pair off and carried secretly under my bathing gown along with my felt hat, as to start with I wore a black straw one. Then, when I got to the cove, I disrobed myself of one set of garments, and put them with my straw hat and one pair of shoes all in an orderly heap on a rock out of the way of the water, as any sensible person preparing to bathe would do. Then I waited for the high tide. It came swiftly and surely, and soon filled the cove,—big waves came with it, rolling in with a splendid dash and roar, and at the proper psychological moment, I threw in all my bathing things, as far out to sea as I could from the summit of the rock where I stood—I saw them whirled round and round in the whelming flood!—in the whelming flood, Sophy!—where my dear Pa and Ma believe I also have been whelmed! Then, when they had nearly disappeared in the hollow of a receding mass of water, I put on my felt hat, and, completely clothed in my one set of decent garments, I quietly walked away.”

“Walked away? Where to?”

“Not to the nearest railway station, you may be sure!” replied Diana. “I might have been known there and traced. I’m a good walker, and it was quite early—only a little after seven,—so I struck across some fields and went inland for about six or eight miles. Then I came upon a little out-of-the-way station connected with a branch line to London—happily a train was just due, and I took it. I had saved five pounds on the housekeeping last month,—I had intended to give them back to my mother—but—considering everything—I felt I might take that small sum for myself without so much as a prick of conscience! So that’s my story—and here I am!”

“And here you’ll stay!” said Sophy eagerly. “Not a soul shall know who you are——”

“I’ll stay for two or three days, but not longer,” said Diana. “I want to get abroad as quickly as possible. And I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to lend me a little money——”

“I’ll lend or give you anything you want,” interrupted Sophy quickly. “Surely you know that!”

“Surely I know that you are one of the kindest-hearted little women in the world!” said Diana. “And your wealthy old bachelor uncle never did a wiser thing than when he left you two thousand a year! Why you remain single I can never understand!”

“That’s because you are a sentimental goose!” declared Sophy. “If you were worldly wise you would see that it’s just that two thousand that does it! The men who propose to me—and there are a good few of them!—want the two thousand first, and me afterwards! Or rather, let us say, some of them would be glad of the two thousand without me altogether! All the nonsense in poetry books about love and dove, and sigh and die, and moon and spoon doesn’t count! I’ve lived till I’m thirty-five and I’ve never met a man yet who was worth a trickle of a tear! They are all sensualists and money-grubbers,—polygamous as monkeys!—and the only thing to be done with them is to make them work to keep the world going, though even that seems little use sometimes.”

“Sophy dear, are you becoming a pessimist?” asked Diana, half smiling. “Surely it is a beautiful world!”

“Yes—it’s beautiful in a natural way—but the artificiality of human life in it is depressing and disgusting! Don’t let us talk of it!—tell me why you are going abroad? What are your plans?”

Diana took a neat leather case from her pocket and drew out of it a folded slip of paper.

“You sent me that!” she said.

“That advertisement!” she exclaimed. “The man who wants ‘Any woman alone in the world, without claims on her time or her affections’? Oh, Diana! You don’t mean it! You’re not really going on such a wild-goose chase?”

“What harm can it do?” said Diana, quietly. “I’m old enough to take care of myself. And I fulfil all the requirements. I am a woman of mature years—I’m courageous and determined, and I have a fair knowledge of modern science. I’m well educated, especially in ‘languages and literature,’ thanks to my solitary studies,—and as I’ve nothing to look forward to in the world I’m not afraid to take risks. It really seems the very sort of thing for me! At any rate I can but go and present myself, as suggested, ‘personally and alone’ to this Dr. Dimitrius at Geneva,—and if he turns out an impostor, well!—Geneva isn’t the worst of places, and I’m sure I could find something to do as a teacher of music, or a ‘companion housekeeper.’ In any case I’m determined to go there and investigate things for myself,—and whatever money you are good enough to lend me, dear Sophy, be sure I’ll never rest till I pay you back every penny!”

Sophy threw an embracing arm round her and kissed her.

“If you never paid me back a farthing I shouldn’t mind!” she said, laughing. “Dear Di, I’m not one of those ‘friends’ who measure love by money! Money and the passion for acquiring it make more than half the hypocrisy, cruelty and selfishness of the age. But all the same I’m not quite sure that I approve of this plan of yours——”

“My dear Sophy, why should you disapprove? Just think of it! Here am I, past forty, without any attraction whatsoever, no looks, no fortune, and nothing to look forward to in life except perhaps the chance of travel and adventure. I’m fond of studies in modern science, and I believe I’ve read every book of note on all the new discoveries,—and here’s a man who plainly announces in his advertisement that he needs the assistance of a woman like me. There can be no harm done by my going to see him. Very likely by the time I get to Geneva he’ll be what the servants call ‘suited.’ Then I’ll try something else. For now, as long as I live I’m alone in the world and must stand on my own.”

“Do you mean to say that you’ll never go back to the old folks?” asked Sophy.

“How can I, when I’m dead!” laughed Diana. “No, no! It would be too awful for them to see me turning up again just when I had ceased to be in the way!”

Sophy frowned.

“Selfish old brutes!” she said.

Diana demurred.

“No, don’t say that!” she expostulated. “You must bear in mind that I’ve been a terrible disappointment to them. They wanted me to marry well,—for money rather than love—and when I wasted my youth for love’s sake, of course they were angry. They thought me a fool,—and really, so I was! I don’t think there can be anything more foolish than to sacrifice the best part of one’s life for any man. He is never worth it,—he never understands or appreciates it. To him women are all alike,—one as good or as bad as t’other. The mistake we make is when we fail to treat him as he treats us! He is a creature who from very babyhood upwards should be whipped rather than spoilt. That is why he is frequently more faithful to his mistress than his wife. He’s afraid of the one, but he can bully the other.”

Sophy clapped her hands.

“Well said, Di! You begin to agree with me at last! Once upon a time you were all for believing in the chivalrous thought and tenderness of men——”

“I wanted to believe,” interrupted Diana, with a half smile—“I can’t honestly say I did!”

“No one can who studies life ever so superficially,” declared Sophy. “Particularly the ordinary matrimonial life. A man selects a woman entirely for selfish purposes—she may be beautiful and he wishes to possess her beauty—or rich, and he wants the use of her money,—or well-connected, and he seeks to push himself through her relations; or a good cook and housekeeper and he wants his appetite well catered for. As for children—well!—sometimes he wants them and more often he doesn’t!—I remember what an awful fuss there was in the house of an unfortunate friend of mine who had twins. Her husband was furious. When he was told of the ‘interesting event’ he used the most unedifying language. ‘Two more mouths to feed!’ he groaned. ‘Good God, what a visitation!’ From the way he went on, you’d have thought that he had had no share at all in the business! He didn’t mind hurting his wife’s feelings or saying hard things to her,—not he! And it’s the same story everywhere you go. A few months of delightful courtship,—then marriage—then incessant routine of housekeeping, illness and child-bearing—and afterwards, when the children grow up, the long dull days of resigned monotony; toothlessness, which is only partially remedied by modern dentistry, and an end of everything vital or pleasurable! Except, of course, unless you kick over the traces and become a ‘fast’ matron with your weather-eye open on all men,—but that kind of woman is always such bad form. Marriage is not worth the trouble it brings,—even children are not unmixed blessings. I’ve never seen any I could not do without!—in fact”—and she laughed—“a bachelor woman with two thousand a year doesn’t want a man to help her to spend it!”

“Quite true,” said Diana, with a slight sigh. “But I haven’t got two thousand a year, or anything a year at all!”

“Never mind!” and Sophy looked wisely confident—“you’ll have all you want and more! Yes!—something tells me you are going to make a great success——”

“Sophy, Sophy! In what?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” and the vivacious little lady jumped up from her chair and shook out her filmy skirts and floating ribbons. “But I feel it! It is one of those ‘waves’—what do you call them?—‘etheric vibrations!’ Yes, that’s it! Don’t you feel those sort of things ever?”

Diana had also risen, and as she stood upright, very still, there was a curious look in her face of expectancy and wonder.

“Yes,” she answered, slowly, “I felt one just now!”

Sophy laughed merrily.

“Of course! I imparted it to you! and you’re going to be a wonderful creature!—I’m sure of it! Your poor brain,—so long atrophied by the domestic considerations of Pa and Ma, is about to expand!—to breathe!—to move!—to act! Yes, Diana!—Think of it! Cinderella shall go to the Prince’s Ball!”

Her bright laughter pealed out again, and Diana laughed too.

“Come and see your room,” went on Sophy. “You’re here at any rate for a day or two, and I’ll keep you as secretly and preciously as a saint in a shrine. You’ve no luggage? Of course, I forgot!—I’ll lend you a nightie!—and you must buy a lot of clothes to-morrow and a box to pack them in. It won’t do for you to go abroad without any luggage. And I’ll help you choose your garments, Di!—you must have something really becoming!—something not after the taste of ‘Pa’ or ‘Ma!’”

“Am I to make a conquest of Dr. Féodor Dimitrius?” asked Diana, playfully. “One would think you had that sort of thing in view!”

“One never knows!” said Sophy, shaking a warning finger at her. “Dr. Dimitrius may be hideous—or he may be fascinating. And whether hideous or fascinating, he may be—amorous! Most men are, at moments!—and in such moments they’ll make love to anything feminine.”

“Not anything feminine of my age,” said Diana, calmly. “He distinctly advertises for a woman of ‘mature’ years.”

“That may be his cunning!” and Sophy looked mysterious. “If we are to believe history, Cleopatra was fifty when she enchanted Anthony.”

“Dear old Egyptian days!” sighed Diana, with a whimsical uplifting of her eyebrows. “Would I had lived in them! With a long plaited black wig and darkened lashes, I too, might have found an Anthony!”

“Well, dress does make a difference,” said Sophy seriously. “That is, of course, if you know where to get it made, and how to put it on, and don’t bundle it round you in a gathered balloon like ‘Ma!’ What a sight that woman does look, to be sure!”

“Poor mother! I tried to make her clothes sit on her,” murmured Diana, regretfully. “But they wouldn’t!”

“Of course they wouldn’t! They simply couldn’t! Now take Mrs. Ross-Percival,—a real old, old harridan!—the terror of her grown-up daughters, who are always watching her lest her wig of young curls should come off,—she gets herself up in such a style that I once heard your father—an easily duped old thing!—say he thought her ‘the most beautiful woman in London!’ And it was all the dress, with a big hat, cosmetics and a complexion veil!”

Diana laughed.

“Pa’s a very susceptible little man!” she said tolerantly. “He has often amused me very much with his ‘amourettes.’ Sometimes it’s Mrs. Ross-Percival,—then he becomes suddenly violently juvenile and pays his devoirs to a girl of seventeen; I think he’d die straight off if he couldn’t believe himself still capable of conquering all hearts! And he’ll be able to get on in that line much better now that I’m drowned. I was ‘in the way.’”

“Silly old noodle!” said Sophy. “He’d better not come near me!—I should tell him a few plain truths of himself which he would not like!”

“Oh, he wouldn’t mind!” Diana assured her. “To begin with, he wouldn’t listen, and if he did, he would grin that funny little grin of his and say you were ‘over-wrought.’ That’s his great word! You can make no impression on Pa if he doesn’t want to be impressed. He has absolutely no feelings—I mean real feelings,—he has only just ‘impulses,’ of anger or pleasure, such as an animal has—and he doesn’t attempt to control either.”

They had by this time left the drawing-room, and were standing together in a charming little bedroom, furnished all in white and rose-colour.

“This is my ‘visitor’s room,’” said Sophy. ”And you can occupy it as long as you like. And I’ll bring you one of my Paris tea-gowns to slip on for dinner,—it’s lovely and you’ll look sweet!”

Diana smiled.

“I! Dear Sophy, you expect miracles!”

But Sophy was not so far wrong. That evening, Diana, arrayed in a gracefully flowing garment of cunningly interwoven soft shades, varying from the hue of Neapolitan violets to palest turquoise, and wearing her really beautiful bright hair artistically coiled on the top of her well-shaped head, was a very different looking Diana to the weary, worn and angular woman in severely cut navy serge who had presented the appearance of an out-of-place governess but a few hours before. If she could not be called young or beautiful, she was distinctly attractive, and Sophy Lansing was delighted.

“My dear, you pay for dressing!” she said, enthusiastically. “And—you mark my words!—you don’t look ‘mature’ enough for that Dr. Dimitrius!”

CHAPTER VI

There are certain people who take a bland and solemn pleasure in the details of death and disaster,—who are glad to assume an air of what they call “Christian resignation,” and who delight in funerals and black-edged note-paper. Regular church-goers are very frequently most particular about this last outward sign and token of the heart’s incurable sorrow; some choose a narrow black edge as being less obtrusive but more subtle,—others a broad, as emblematic of utter hopelessness. The present writer once happened on a cynical stationer, who had his own fixed ideas on this particular department of mourning which was so closely connected with his trade.

“The broader the edge, the less the grief,” he assured me. “Just as I say of widows, the longer the veil, the sooner the second wedding,—and the more wreaths there are on a hearse, the fewer the friends of the deceased. That’s my experience.”

But no one should accept these remarks as anything but the cynical view of a small tradesman whose opinion of his clients was somewhat embittered.

A letter with a black border which was neither broad nor narrow, but discreetly medium, appeared among Sophy Lansing’s daily pile of correspondence the morning after Diana’s arrival at her flat, and, recognising the handwriting on the envelope, she at once selected it from the rest, and ran into her friend’s room, waving it aloft triumphantly.

“Look!” she exclaimed. “From your poor, afflicted Pa! To announce the sad news!”

Diana, fresh from her bath, her hair hanging about her and the faint pink of her cheeks contrasting becomingly with the pale blue of her dressing-gown, looked up rather wistfully.

“Do open it!” she said. “I’m sure it will be a beautiful letter! Pa can express himself quite eloquently when he thinks it worth while. I remember he wrote a most charming ‘gush’ of sympathy to a woman who had lost her husband suddenly,—she was a titled person, and Pa worships titles,—and when he had posted it he said: ‘Thank God that’s done with! It’s bad enough to write a letter of condolence at all, but when you have to express sorrow for the death of an old fool who is better out of the world than in it, it’s a positive curse!’”

She laughed, adding: “I know he isn’t really sorry for my supposed ‘death’; if the real, bare, brutal truth were told, he’s glad!”

Sophy Lansing paused in the act of opening the letter.

“Diana!” she exclaimed in a tone of thrilling indignation. “If he’s such an old brute as that——”

“Oh, no, he isn’t really an old brute!” Diana averred, gently. “He’s just a very ordinary sort of man. Lots of people pretend to be sorry for the deaths of their friends and relatives when they’re not; and half the mourning in the world is sheer hypocrisy! Pa’s a bit of a coward, too—he hates the very thought of death, and when some person he has known commits this last indiscretion of dying, he forgets it as quickly as possible. I don’t blame him, I’m sure. Everyone can’t feel deeply—some people can’t feel at all.”

Here Sophy opened the letter and glanced at it. Presently she looked up.

“Shall I read it to you?” she asked.

Diana nodded. With a small, preparatory cough, which sounded rather like a suppressed giggle, Sophy thereupon read the following effusion:

“Dear Miss Lansing,

“I hardly know how to break to you the news of the sudden and awful tragedy which has wrecked the happiness of our lives! Our beloved only child, our darling daughter Diana is no more! I am aware what a shock this will be to your feelings, for you loved her as a friend, and I wish any words of mine could soften the blow. But I am too stunned myself with grief and horror to write more than just suffices to tell you of the fatal calamity. The poor child was overtaken by a high tide while bathing this morning, and was evidently carried out of her depth. For some hours I have waited and hoped against hope that perhaps, as she was a good swimmer, she might have reached some other part of the shore, but alas! I hear from persons familiar with this coast that the swirl of water in a high tide is so strong and often so erratic that it is doubtful whether even her poor body will ever be found! A sailor has just called here with a melancholy relic—her poor little bathing shoes! He picked up one this morning, soon after the accident, he says, and the other has lately been washed ashore. I cannot go on writing,—my heart is too full! My poor wife is quite beside herself with sorrow. We can only place our trust in God that He will, with time, help us to find consolation for our irreparable loss. We shall not forget your affection for our darling, and shall hope to send you her little wristlet watch as a souvenir.

“Yours, in the deepest affliction,
“James Polydore May.”

Diana had listened with close and almost fascinated attention.

“Of course it isn’t true,” she said, when the reading was finished. “It can’t be true.”

“What can’t be true?” queried Sophy, puckering her well-arched eyebrows.

“All that!” and Diana waved her hand expressively. “Pa’s not a bit ‘stunned with grief and horror!’ You couldn’t fancy him in such a condition if you tried! And mother is not in the least ‘beside herself.’ She’s probably ordering her mourning. Why, they are already parcelling out my trinkets, and before I’ve been ‘drowned’ twenty-four hours they’re thinking of sending you my wristlet watch by way of an ‘In Memoriam.’ I hope they will,—I should love you to have it! But people who are ‘stunned with grief and horror’ and ‘beside themselves’ are not able to make all these little arrangements so quickly! Ah, Sophy! An hour ago I was actually fancying that perhaps I had behaved cruelly,—there was a stupid, lingering sentiment in my mind that suggested the possible suffering and despair of my father and mother at having lost me!—but after that letter I am reassured! I know I have done the right thing.”

Sophy looked at her with a smile.

“You are a curious creature!” she said. “Surely Pa expresses himself very touchingly?”

“Too touchingly by half!” answered Diana. “Had he really felt the grief he professes to feel, he could not have written to you or to any other friend for several days about it——”

“Perhaps,” interrupted Sophy, “he thought it would be in the papers, and that unless he wrote it might be taken for someone else——”

“He knew it would be in the papers,” said Diana, “and naturally wished to let his acquaintances know that he, and no other man of the name of May, is the bereaved father of the domestic melodrama. Well!”—and she shook back her hair over her shoulders—“it’s finished! I am dead!—and ‘born again,’ as the Scripture saith,—at rather a mature age!—but I may yet turn out worth regenerating!—who knows?”

She laughed, and turned to the dressing-table to complete her toilette. Sophy put affectionate arms about her.

“You are a dear, strange, clever, lovable thing, anyway!” she said. “But really, I’ve had quite a sleepless night thinking about that Dr. Dimitrius! He may be a secret investigator or a spy, and if you go to him he may want you to do all sorts of dreadful, even criminal things!——”

“But I shouldn’t do them!” laughed Diana. “Sophy, have you no confidence in my mental balance?”

“I have, but some people wouldn’t,” Sophy replied. “They would say that a woman of your age ought to know better than to leave a comfortable home where you had only the housekeeping to do, and give up the chance of an ample income at your parents’ death, just to go away on a wild-goose chase after new adventures, and all because you imagined you weren’t loved! Oh, dear! Love is only ‘a springe to catch woodcocks!’ as the venerable Polonius so wisely remarks in Hamlet. I know a sneering cynic who says that women are always ‘asking for love!’”

Diana paused in the act of brushing out a long bright ripple of hair. Her eyes grew sombre—almost tragic.

“So they are!” she said. “They ask for it because they know God meant them to have it! They know they were created for lover-love, wife-love, mother-love,—just think what life means to them when cheated out of all three through the selfishness and treachery of man! Their blood gets poisoned—their thoughts share the bitterness of their blood—they are no longer real women; they become abnormal and of no sex,—they shriek with the Suffragettes, and put on trousers to go ‘on the land’ with the men—they do anything and everything to force men’s attention—forgetting that efforts made on the masculine line completely fail in attraction for the male sex. It is the sensual and physical side of a woman that subjugates a man,—therefore when she is past her youth she has little or no ‘chance,’ as they call it. If she happens to be brainless, she turns into a sour, grizzling, tea-drinking nonentity and talks nothing but scandal and diseases,—if she is intellectually brilliant, well!—sometimes she ‘rounds’ on the dogs that have bayed her into solitude, and, like a wounded animal, springs to her revenge!”

The words came impetuously from her lips, uttered in that thrillingly sweet voice which was her special gift and charm.

Sophy’s bright eyes opened in sheer astonishment.

“Why, Diana!” she exclaimed. “You talk like a tragedy queen!”

Diana shrugged her shoulders lightly.

“Do I?” and she slowly resumed the brushing of her hair. “There’s nothing in what I say but the distinctly obvious. Love is the necessity of life to a woman, and when that fails——”

“Diana, Diana!” interrupted Sophy, shaking a warning finger at her—“you talk of love as if it really were the ‘ideal’ thing described by poets and romancists, when it’s only the sugar-paper to attract and kill the flies! We women begin life by believing in it; but every married friend of mine tells me that all the ‘honey’ of the ‘moon’ is finished in a couple of months, never again to be found in the pot-au-feu of matrimony! Out of a thousand men taken at random perhaps one will really love, in the best and finest sense; the rest are only swayed by animal passion such as is felt by the wolf, the bear, or even the rabbit!—I really think the rabbit is the most exact prototype! How many wives one knows whose husbands not only neglect them, but are downright rude to them!—Why, my dear, your notion of ‘love’ is a dream, beyond all realisation!”

“Possibly!” and Diana went on with her hair-brushing. “But whatever it is, or whatever I imagined it to be, I don’t want it now. I want—revenge!”

“Revenge?” Sophy gave a little start of surprise. “You? You, always gentle, patient and adaptable! You want ‘revenge’? On whom? On what?”

“On all and everything that has set me apart and alone as I am!” Diana answered. “Perhaps science can show me a way to it! If so, I shall not have lived in vain!”

“Diana!” exclaimed her friend. “One would think you were going to bring microbes in a bottle, or something awful of that sort, and kill people!”

“Not I!” and Diana laughed quite merrily. “Killing is a common thing—and vulgar. But—I have strange dreams!” She twisted up her hair dexterously and coiled it prettily round her small, compact head. “Yes!—I have strange dreams!” she went on. “In these times we are apt to forget the conquests possible to the brain,—we let fools over-ride us when we could far more easily over-ride them. In my ‘salad days,’ which lasted far too long, I ‘asked for love’—now I ask for vengeance! I gave all my heart and soul to a man whose only god was Self,—and I got nothing back for my faith and truth. So I have a long score to settle!—and I shall try to have some of my spent joys returned to me—with heavy interest!”

“But how?” inquired Sophy, perplexed. “You don’t expect to get any ‘spent joys’ out of this Dr. Dimitrius, do you?”

Diana smiled. “No!”

“And if he proves to be a charlatan, as he probably will, you say you’ll go as companion or governess or housekeeper to somebody out in Geneva—well, where are you going to find any joy in such a life as that?”

Diana looked at her, still smiling.

“My dear, I don’t expect anything! Who was it that said: ‘Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed’? The chief point I have now to dwell upon is, that I am to all intents and purposes Dead! and, being dead, I’m free!—almost as free as if my spirit had really escaped from its mortal prison. Really, there’s something quite vitalising in the situation!—just now I feel ready for anything. I shouldn’t mind trying an airship voyage to the moon!”

“With Dr. Dimitrius?” suggested Sophy, laughing.

“Well, I don’t know anything about Dr. Dimitrius yet,” answered Diana. “Judging from his advertisement I imagine he is some wealthy ‘crank’ who fancies himself a scientist. There are any amount of them wandering about the world at the present time. I shall soon be able to tell whether he’s a humbug or an honest man,—whether he’s mad or sane—meanwhile, dear little Sophy, let’s have breakfast and then go shopping. We’ve done with Pa and Ma—at any rate I have, bless their dear old hearts!—we know they’re ‘stunned with grief and horror’ and ‘beside themselves’ and as happy in their ‘misery’ as they ever were in their lives. I can see my mother getting fitted for her mourning, and ‘Pa’ arguing with the hatter as to the proper width of his hat-band, and all the neighbours calling, and proffering ‘sympathy’ when they don’t care a scrap! It’s a curious little humbug of a world, Sophy!—but for the remainder of my time I’ll try to make it of use to me. Only you’ll have to lend me some money to begin upon!”

“Any amount you want!” said Sophy, enthusiastically—“You must have proper clothes to travel in!”

“I must,” agreed Diana, with humorously dramatic emphasis. “I haven’t had any since I was ‘withdrawn’ from the matrimonial market for lack of bidders. Mother used to spend hundreds on me so long as there was any hope—I had the prettiest frocks, the daintiest hats,—and in these I ‘radiated’ at all the various shows,—Ranelagh, Hurlingham, Henley, Ascot, Goodwood,—how sick I used to be of it! But when these little crowsfeet round my eyes began to come”—and she touched her temples expressively—“then poor, disappointed Ma drew in the purse-strings. She found that very ‘young’ hats didn’t suit me—delicate sky-pinks and blues made me look sallow,—so she and Pa decided on giving me an ‘allowance’—too meagre to stand the cost of anything but the plainest garments—and—so, here I am! Pa says ‘only very young people should wear white’—but the vain old boy got himself up in white flannels the other day to play tennis and thought he looked splendid! But what’s the odds, so long as he’s happy!”

She laughed and turned to the mirror to complete her toilette, and in less than an hour’s time she and Sophy Lansing had finished their breakfast and were out together in Bond Street, exploring the mysteries of the newest Aladdin’s palace of elegant garments, where the perfect taste and deft fingers of practised Parisian fitters soon supplied all that was needed to suit Diana’s immediate requirements. At one very noted establishment, she slipped into a “model” gown of the finest navy serge, of a design and cut so admirable that the couturier could hardly be said to flatter when he declared that “Madame looked a princess in it.”

“Do princesses always look well?” she asked, with a quaint little uplifting of her eyebrows.

The great French tailor waved his hands expressively.

“Ah, Madame! It is a figure of speech!”

Diana laughed,—but she purchased the costume, Sophy whispering mysteriously in her ear: “Let us take it with us in the automobile! One never knows!—they might change it! And you’ll never get anything to suit you more perfectly.”

Miss Lansing was worldly-wise; she had not gained the reputation of being one of the best-dressed women in London without learning many little ins and outs of “model” gowns which are hidden from the profane. Many and many a time had she been “taken in,” on this deep question,—many a “model” had she chosen, leaving it to be sent home, and on receipt had found it to be only a clever “copy” which, on being tried on, had proved a misfit. And well she knew that complaint was useless, as the tailor or modiste who supplied the goods would surely prove a veritable Ananias in swearing that she had received the “model,” and the model only. On this occasion she had her way, and, despite the deprecating appeal of the couturier that he might be allowed to send it, the becoming costume was packed and placed safely in the automobile, and she and Diana drove off with it.

“You never could look better in anything!” declared Sophy. “Promise me you’ll wear it when you make your first call on Dr. Dimitrius!”

“But, my dear, it may be too much for him!” laughed Diana. “He wants ‘a courageous and determined woman of mature years,’—and so charming a Paris costume may not ‘dress’ the part!”

“Never mind whether it does or not,” said Sophy. “I can’t believe he wants an old frump! You may not believe me, Di, but you look perfectly fascinating in that gown—almost young again!”

Diana’s blue eyes clouded with a touch of sadness. She sighed a little.

“Almost!—not quite!” she answered. “But—‘dress does make a difference!’—there’s no doubt of it! These last few years I’m not ashamed to say I’ve longed for pretty clothes—I suppose it’s the dying spirit of youth trying to take a last caper! And now, with all these vanity purchases, I am horribly in your debt. Dear Sophy, how shall I ever repay you?”

“Don’t know and don’t care!” said Sophy, recklessly. “I’m not a grasping creditor. And something tells me you are going to be very rich!—perhaps this man Dimitrius is a millionaire and wants a clever woman for his wife—a sort of Madame Curie to help him with his experiments——”

“Then I shall not suit him,” interrupted Diana, “for I never intend to be wife to any man. First of all, I’m too old—secondly, if I were young again, I wouldn’t. It isn’t worth while!”

“But didn’t you say you wanted to be loved?” queried Sophy.

“Does marriage always fulfil that need?” counter-queried Diana.

They exchanged glances—smiled—shrugged shoulders and dropped the conversation.

Two days later Diana left England for Geneva.

CHAPTER VII

Geneva is one of those many towns in Switzerland which give the impression of neat commonplace in the midst of romance,—the same impression which is conveyed by a housewife’s laying out of domestic linen in the centre of a beautiful garden. The streets are clean and regular,—the houses well-built and characterless, sometimes breaking forth into “villas” of fantastic appearance and adornment, which display an entire absence of architectural knowledge or taste,—the shops are filled with such trifles as are likely to appeal to tourists, but have little to offer of original production that cannot be purchased more satisfactorily elsewhere, and the watches that glitter in the chief jeweller’s window on the Quai des Bergues are nothing better than one sees in the similar windows of Bond Street or Regent Street. There is nothing indeed remarkable about Geneva itself beyond its historic associations and memories of famous men, such as Calvin and Rousseau;—its chief glory is gained from its natural surroundings of blue lake and encircling chain of mountains, with Mont Blanc towering up in the distance,

“In a wreath of mist,

By the sunlight kiss’d,

And a diadem of snow.”

The suburbs are far more attractive than the town; for, beyond the radius of the streets and the hateful, incessant noise of the electric trams, there are many charming residences set among richly wooded grounds and brilliant parterres of flowers, where the most fastidious lover of loveliness might find satisfaction for the eyes and rest for the mind, especially on the road towards Mont Salève and Mornex. Here one sees dazzling mists streaming off the slopes of the mountains,—exquisite tints firing the sky at sunrise and sunset, and mirrored in the infinite blue of the lake,—and even in the heats of summer, a delicious breeze blows over the fresh green fields with the cold scent of the Alpine snow in its breath. And here on a fresh beautiful autumn morning Diana May found herself walking swiftly along with light and eager steps, her whole being alive with interested anticipation. Never had she felt so well; health bounded in her pulse and sparkled in her eyes, and the happy sense of perfect freedom gave to every movement of her thin, supple figure, that elasticity and grace which are supposed to be the special dower of extreme youth, though, as a matter of fact, youth is often ungainly in action and cumbersome in build. She had stayed two days and nights at a quiet little hotel in Geneva on arrival, in order to rest well and thoroughly, after her journey from England before presenting herself at the Château Fragonard, the residence of the mysterious Dr. Dimitrius; and she had made a few casual yet careful inquiries as to the Château and its owner. Nobody seemed to know more than that “Monsieur le Docteur Dimitrius” was a rich man, and that his Château had been built for him by a celebrated French architect who had spared neither labour nor cost. He was understood to be a scientist, very deeply absorbed in difficult matters of research,—he was unmarried and lived alone with his mother. Just now he had so much to do that he was advertising in all the papers for “an intellectual elderly lady” to assist him. Diana was indebted for this last “personal note” to a chatty bookseller in the Rue du Mont Blanc. She smiled as she listened, turning over some of the cheap fiction on his counter.

“He is not suited yet?” she inquired.

“Ah, no, Madame! It is not likely he will be suited! For what lady will admit herself to be sufficiently elderly? Ah, no? It is not possible!”

Later on, she learned that the Château Fragonard was situated some distance out of Geneva, and well off the high road.

“Madame wishes to see the grounds?” inquired the cheery driver of a little carriage plying for hire. “It would be necessary to ask permission. But they are very fine!—Ah, wonderful!—as fine as those of Rothschild! And if one were not admitted, it is easy to take a boat, and view them from the lake! The lawns slope to the water’s edge.”

“Exquisite!” murmured Diana to herself. “It will be worth while trying to remain in such a paradise!”

And she questioned the willingly communicative cocher as to how long it might take to walk to the Château?

“About an hour,” he replied. “A pleasant walk, too, Madame! One sees the lake and mountains nearly all the way.”

This information decided her as to her plans. She knew that the eccentric wording of the Dimitrius advertisement required any applicant to present herself between six and eight in the morning, which was an ideal time for a walk in the bracing, brilliant Alpine air. So she determined to go on foot the very next day; and before she parted with the friendly driver, she had ascertained the exact position of the Château, and the easiest and quickest way to get there.

And now,—having risen with the first peep of dawn, and attired herself in that becoming navy serge “model,” which her astute friend Sophy had borne triumphantly out of the French tailor’s emporium, she was on her way to the scene of her proposed adventure. She walked at a light, rapid pace—the morning was bright and cool, almost cold when the wind blew downward from the mountains, and she was delightfully conscious of that wonderful exhilaration and ease given to the whole physical frame by a clear atmosphere, purified by the constant presence of ice and snow. As she moved along in happiest mood, she thought of many things;—she was beginning to be amazed, as well as charmed, by the various changes which had, within a week, shaken her lately monotonous life into brilliant little patterns like those in a kaleidoscope. The web and woof of Circumstance was no longer all dull grey, like the colour her father had judged most suitable for her now that she was no longer young,—threads of rose and sky blue had found their hopeful way into the loom. Her days of housekeeping, checking tradesmen’s bills and flower-arranging seemed a very long way off; it was hardly credible to her mind that but a short time ago she had been responsible for the ordering of her parents’ lunches and dinners and the general management of the summer “change” at Rose Lea on the coast of Devon,—that fatal coast where she had been so cruelly drowned! Before leaving London, she had seen a few casual paragraphs in the newspapers concerning this disaster, headed “Bathing Fatality”—“Sad End of a Lady”—or “Drowned while Bathing,” but, naturally, being a nobody, she had left no gap in society,—she was only one of many needless women. And it was an altogether new and aspiring Diana May that found herself alive on this glorious morning in Switzerland; not the resigned, patient, orderly “old maid” with a taste for Jacobean embroidery and a wholesome dislike of the “snap-snap-snarl” humours of her father.

“I never seem to have been my own real self till now!” she said inwardly. “And now I hardly realise that I have a father and mother at all! What a tyrannical bogy I have made of my ‘duty’ to them! And ‘love’ is another bogy!”

She glanced at her watch,—one of Sophy Lansing’s numerous dainty trifles—“Keep it in exchange,” Sophy had said, “for yours which your bereaved parents are going to send me as an ‘In Memoriam’!” It was ten minutes to seven. Looking about her to take note of her bearings, she saw on the left-hand side a deep bend in the road, which curved towards a fine gateway of wrought iron, surmounted by a curious device representing two crossed spears springing from the centre of a star,—and she knew she had arrived at her destination. Her heart beat a little more quickly as she approached the gateway—there was no keeper’s lodge, so she pulled at a handle which dimly suggested the possibility of a bell. There was no audible response,—but to all appearance the gates noiselessly unbarred themselves, and slowly opened. She entered at once without hesitation, and they as slowly closed behind her. She was in the grounds of the Château Fragonard. Immense borders of heliotrope in full bloom fringed either side of the carriage drive where she stood, and the mere lifting of her eyes showed masses of flowering shrubs and finely-grown trees bending their shadowy branches over velvety stretches of rich green grass, or opening in leafy archways here and there to disclose enchanting glimpses of blue water or dazzling peaks of far-off snow. She would have been glad to linger among such lovely surroundings, for she had a keen comprehension of and insight into the beauty of Nature and all the joys it offers to a devout and discerning spirit, but she bethought herself that if Dr. Dimitrius was anything of an exact or punctilious person, he would expect an applicant to be rather before than after time. A silver-toned chime, striking slowly and musically on the sunlit silence, rang seven o’clock as she reached the Château, which looked like a miniature palace of Greek design, and was surrounded with a broad white marble loggia, supported by finely fluted Ionic columns, between two of which on each side a fountain played. But Diana had scarcely time to look at anything while quickly ascending the short flight of steps leading to the door of entrance; she saw a bell and was in haste to ring it. Her summons was answered at once by a negro servant dressed in unassuming dark livery.

“Dr. Dimitrius?” she queried.

The negro touched his lips with an expressive movement signifying that he was dumb,—but he was not deaf, for he nodded an affirmative to her inquiry, and by a civil gesture invited her to enter. In another few seconds she found herself in a spacious library—a finely proportioned room, apparently running the full length of the house, with large French windows at both ends, commanding magnificent views.

Left alone for several minutes, she moved about half timidly, half boldly, looking here and there—at the great globes, celestial and terrestrial, which occupied one corner,—at the long telescope on its stand ready for use and pointed out to the heavens—and especially at a curious instrument of fine steel set on a block of crystal, which swung slowly up and down incessantly, striking off an infinitesimal spark of fire as it moved.

“Some clock-work thing,” she said half aloud. “But where is its mechanism?”

“Ah, where!” echoed a deep, rather pleasant voice close at her ear. “That, as Hamlet remarked, is the question!”

She started and turned quickly with a flush of colour mounting to her brows,—a man of slight build and medium height stood beside her.

“You are Dr. Dimitrius?” she said.

He smiled. “Even so! I am he! And you——?”

Swiftly she glanced him over. He was not at all an alarming, weird, or extraordinary-looking personage. Young?—yes, surely young for a man—not above forty; and very personable, if intelligent features, fine eyes and a good figure can make a man agreeable to outward view. And yet there was something about him more than mere appearance,—she could not tell what it was, and just then she had no time to consider. She rushed at once into the business of her errand.

“My name is May,—Diana May,” she said, conscious of nervousness in speaking, but mastering herself by degrees. “I have come from England in answer to your advertisement. I am interested—very deeply interested—in matters of modern science, and I have gained some little knowledge through a good deal of personal, though quite unguided study. I am most anxious to be useful—and I am not afraid to take any risks——”

She broke off, a little confused under the steady scrutiny of Dr. Dimitrius’s eyes. He placed an easy chair by the nearest window. “Pray sit down!” he said, with a courteous gesture,—then, as she obeyed: “You have walked here from Geneva?”

“Yes.”

“When did you arrive from England?”

“Two days ago.”

“Have you stated to anyone the object of your journey?”

“Only to one person—an intimate woman friend who lent me the money for my travelling expenses.”

“I see!” And Dimitrius smiled benevolently. “You have not explained yourself or your intentions to any good Genevese hotel proprietor?”

She looked up in quick surprise.

“No, indeed!”

“Wise woman!” Here Dimitrius drew up a chair opposite to her and sat down. “My experience has occasionally shown me that lone ladies arriving in a strange town and strange hotel, throw themselves, so to speak, on the bosom of the book-keeper or the landlady, and to her impart their whole business. It is a mistake!—an error of confiding innocence—but it is often made. You have not made it,—and that is well! You have never married?”

Diana coloured—then answered with gentleness:

“No. I am what is called a spinster,—an old maid.”

“The first is by far the prettiest name,” said Dimitrius. “It evokes a charming vision of olden time when women sat at their spinning wheels, each one waiting for Faust, à la Marguerite, unaware of the Devil behind him! ‘Old maid’ is a coarse English term,—there are coarse English terms! and much as I adore England and the English, I entirely disapprove of their ‘horseplay’ on women! No doubt you know what I mean?”

“I think I do,” replied Diana, slowly. “It is that when a woman is neither a man’s bound slave nor his purchased toy, she is turned into a jest.”

“Precisely! You have expressed it perfectly!” and his keen eyes flashed over her comprehensively. “But let us keep to business. You are a spinster, and I presume you are, in the terms of my advertisement, ‘alone in the world, without claims on your time or your affections.’ Is that so?”

Quietly she answered:

“That is so.”

“Now you will remember I asked for ‘a courageous and determined woman of mature years.’ You do not look very ‘mature’——”

“I am past forty,” said Diana.

“A frank, but unnecessary admission,” he answered, smiling. “You should never admit to more years than your appearance gives you. However, I am glad you told me, as it better suits my purpose. And you consider yourself ‘courageous and determined’?”

She looked at him straightly.

“I think I am—I hope I am,” she said. “I have had many disillusions and have lost all I once hoped to win; so that I can honestly say even death would not matter to me, as I have nothing to live for. Except the love of Nature and its beauty——”

“And its wisdom and mastery of all things,” finished Dimitrius. “And to feel that unless we match its wisdom with our will to be instructed, and its mastery with our obedience and worship, we ‘shall surely die’!”

His eyes flashed upon her with a curious expression, and just for a passing moment she felt a little afraid of him. He went on, speaking with deliberate emphasis:

“Yes,—if you are indeed a student of Nature, you surely know that! And you know also that the greatest, deepest, most amazing, and most enlightening discoveries made in science during the last thirty years or so are merely the result of cautious and sometimes casual probing of one or two of this vast Nature’s smaller cells of active intelligence. We have done something,—but how much remains to do!”

He paused,—and Diana gazed at him questioningly. He smiled as he met her eager and interested look.

“We shall have plenty of time to talk of these matters,” he said—“if I decide that you can be useful to me. What languages do you know besides your own?”

“French, Italian and a little Russian,” she answered. “The two first quite fluently,—Russian I have studied only quite lately—and I find it rather difficult——”

“Being a Russian myself I can perhaps make it easy for you,” said Dimitrius, kindly. “To study such a language without a teacher shows considerable ambition and energy on your part.”

She flushed a little at the mere suggestion of praise and sat silent.

“I presume you have quite understood, Miss May,” he presently resumed, in a more formal tone, “that I require the services of an assistant for one year at least—possibly two years. If I engage you, you must sign an agreement with me to that effect. Another very special point is that of confidence. Nothing that you do, see, or hear while working under my instructions is ever to pass your lips. You must maintain the most inviolable secrecy, and when once you are in this house you must neither write letters nor receive them. If you are, as I suggested in my advertisement, ‘alone in the world, without any claims on your time or your affections,’ you will not find this a hardship. My experiments in chemistry may or may not give such results as I hope for, but while I am engaged upon them I want no imitative bunglers attempting to get on the same line. Therefore I will run no risks of even the smallest hint escaping as to the nature of my work.”

Diana bent her head in assent.

“I understand,” she said—“And I am quite willing to agree to your rules. I should only wish to write one letter, and that I can do from the hotel,—just to return the money my friend lent me for my expenses. And I should ask you to advance me that sum out of whatever salary you offer. Then I need give no further account of myself. Sophy,—that is my friend—would write to acknowledge receipt of the money, and then our correspondence would end.”

“This would not vex or worry you?” inquired Dimitrius.

She smiled. “I am past being vexed or worried at anything!” she said. “Life is just a mere ‘going on’ for me now, with thankfulness to find even a moment of interest in it as I go!”

Dimitrius rose from his chair and walked up and down, his hands clasped behind his back. She watched him in fascinated attention, with something of suspense and fear lest after all he should decide against her. She noted the supple poise of his athletic figure, clad in a well-cut, easy summer suit of white flannels,—his dark, compact head, carried with a certain expression of haughtiness, and last, but not least, his hands, which in their present careless attitude nevertheless expressed both power and refinement.

Suddenly he wheeled sharply round and stood, facing her.

“I think you will do,” he said,—and her heart gave a quick throb of relief which, unconsciously to herself, suffused her pale face with a flush of happiness—“I think I shall find in you obedience, care, and loyalty. But there is yet an important point to consider,—do you, in your turn, think you can put up with me? I am very masterful, not to say obstinate; I will have no ‘scamp’ work,—I am often very impatient, and I can be extremely disagreeable. You must take all this well into your consideration, for I am perfectly honest with you when I say I am not easy to serve. And remember!”—here he drew a few steps closer to her and looked her full in the eyes—“the experiments on which I am engaged are highly dangerous,—and, as I stated in my advertisement, you must not be ‘afraid to take risks,’—for if you agree to assist me in the testing of certain problems in chemistry, it may cost you your very life!”

She smiled.

“It’s very kind of you to prepare me for all the difficulties and dangers of my way,” she said. “And I thank you! But I have no fear. There is really nothing to be afraid of,—one can but die once. If you will take me, I’ll do my faithful best to obey your instructions in every particular, and so far as is humanly possible, you shall have nothing to complain of.”

He still bent his eyes searchingly upon her.

“You have a good nerve?”

“I think so.”

“You must be sure of that! My laboratory is not a place for hesitation, qualms, or terrors,” he said. “The most amazing manifestations occur there sometimes——”

“I have said I am not afraid,” interrupted Diana, with a touch of pride. “If you doubt my word, let me go,—but if you are disposed to engage me, please accept me at my own valuation.”

He laughed, and his face lightened with kindliness and humour.

“I like that!” he said. “I see you have some spirit! Good! Now, to business. I have made up my mind that you will suit me,—and you have also apparently made up your mind that I shall suit you. Very well. Your salary with me will be a thousand a year——”

Diana uttered a little cry.

“A thou—a thousand a year!” she ejaculated. “Oh, you mean a thousand francs?”

“No, I don’t. I mean a thousand good British pounds sterling,—the risks you will run in working with me are quite worth that. You will have your own suite of rooms and your own special hours of leisure for private reading and study, and all your meals will be supplied, though we should like you to share them with us at our table, if you have no objection. And when you are not at work, or otherwise engaged, I should be personally very much obliged if you would be kind and companionable to my mother.”

Diana could scarcely speak; she was overwhelmed by what she considered the munificence and generosity of his offer.

“You are too good,” she faltered. “You wish to give me more than my abilities merit——”

“I must be the best judge of that,” he said, and moving to a table desk in the centre of the room he opened a drawer and took out a paper. “Will you come here and read this? And then sign it?”

She went to his side, and taking the paper from his hand, read it carefully through. It was an agreement, simply and briefly worded, which bound her as confidential assistant and private secretary to Féodor Dimitrius for the time of one year positively, with the understanding that this period should be extended to two years, if agreeable to both parties. Without a moment’s hesitation, she took up a pen, dipped it in ink, and signed it in a clear and very firmly characteristic way.

“A good signature!” commented Dimitrius. “If handwriting expresses anything, you should be possessed of a strong will and a good brain. Have you ever had occasion to exercise either?”

Diana thought a moment—then laughed.

“Yes!—in a policy of repression!”

A humorous sparkle in his eyes responded to her remark.

“I understand! Well, now”—and he put away the signed agreement in a drawer of his desk and locked it—“you must begin to obey me at once! You will first come and have some breakfast, and I’ll introduce you to my mother. Next, you will return to your hotel in Geneva, pay your bill, and remove your luggage. I can show you a short cut back to the town, through these grounds and by the border of the lake. By the way, how much do you owe your friend in England?”

“About a hundred pounds.”

“Here is an English bank-note for that sum,” said Dimitrius, taking it from a roll of paper money in his desk. “Send it to her in a registered letter. And here is an extra fifty pound note for any immediate expenses,—you will understand you have drawn this money in advance of your salary. Now when you get to your hotel, have your luggage taken to the railway station and left in the Salle des Bagages,—they will give you a number for it. Then when all this is done, walk quietly back here by the same private path through the grounds which you will presently become acquainted with, and I will send a man I sometimes employ from Mornex, to fetch your belongings here. In this way the good gossiping folk of Geneva will be unable to state what has become of you, or where you have chosen to go. You follow me?”

“Quite!” answered Diana—“And I shall obey you in every particular.”

“Good! Now come and see my mother.”

He showed her into an apartment situated on the other side of the entrance hall—a beautiful room, lightly and elegantly furnished, where, at a tempting-looking breakfast table, spread with snowy linen, delicate china and glittering silver, sat one of the most picturesque old ladies possible to imagine. She rose as her son and Diana entered and advanced to meet them with a charming grace—her tall slight figure, snow-white hair, and gentle, delicate face, lit up with the tenderest of blue eyes, making an atmosphere of attractive influence around her as she moved.

“Mother,” said Dimitrius, “I have at last found the lady who is willing to assist me in my work—here she is. She has come from England—let me introduce her. Miss Diana May,—Madame Dimitrius.”

“You are very welcome,”—and Madame Dimitrius held out both hands to Diana, with an expressive kindness which went straight to the solitary woman’s heart. “It is indeed a relief to me to know that my son is satisfied! He has such great ideas!—such wonderful schemes!—alas, I cannot follow or comprehend them!—I am not clever! You have walked from Geneva?—and no breakfast? My dear, sit down,—the coffee is just made.”

And in two or three minutes Diana found herself chatting away at perfect ease, with two of the most intelligent and companionable persons she had ever met,—so that the restraint under which she had suffered for years gradually relaxed, and her own natural wit and vivacity began to sparkle with a brightness it had never known since her choleric father and adipose mother had “sat upon her” once and for all, as a matrimonial failure. Madame Dimitrius encouraged her to talk, and every now and then she caught the dark, almost sombre eyes of Dimitrius himself fixed upon her musingly, so that occasionally the old familiar sense of “wonder” arose in her,—wonder as to how all her new circumstances would arrange themselves,—what her work would be—and what might result from the whole strange adventure. But when, after breakfast, she was shown the beautiful “suite” of apartments destined for her occupation, with windows commanding a glorious view of the lake and the Mont Blanc chain of mountains, and furnished with every imaginable comfort and luxury, she was amazed and bewildered at the extraordinary good luck which had befallen her, and said so openly without the slightest hesitation. Madame Dimitrius seemed amused at the frankness of her admiration and delight.

“This is nothing for us to do,” she said, kindly. “You will have difficult and intricate work and much fatigue of brain; you will need repose and relaxation in your own apartments, and we have made them as comfortable as we can. There are plenty of books, as you see,—and the piano is a ‘bijou grand,’ very sweet in tone. Do you play?”

“A little,” Diana admitted.

“Play me something now!”

Obediently she sat down, and her fingers wandered as of themselves into a lovely “prélude” of Chopin’s—a tangled maze of delicate tones which crossed and recrossed each other like the silken flowers of fine tapestry. The instrument she played on was delicious in touch and quality, and she became so absorbed in the pleasure of playing that she almost forgot her listeners. When she stopped she looked up, and saw Dimitrius watching her.

“Excellent! You have a rare gift!” he said. “You play like an artist and thinker.”

She coloured with a kind of confusion,—she had seldom or never been praised for any accomplishment she possessed. Madame Dimitrius smiled at her, with tears in her eyes.

“Such music takes me back to my youth,” she said. “All the old days of hope and promise! ... Ah! ... you will play to me often?”

“Whenever you like,” answered Diana, with a thrill of tenderness in her always sweet voice,—she was beginning to feel an affection for this charming and dignified old lady, who had not outlived sentiment so far as to be unmoved by the delicate sorrows of Chopin. “You have only to ask me.”

“And now,” put in Dimitrius, “as you know where you will live, you must go back to Geneva and get your luggage, in the way I told you. We’ll go together through the grounds,—it’s half an hour’s walk instead of nearly two hours by the road.”

“It did not seem like two hours this morning,” said Diana.

“No, I daresay not. You were eager to get here, and walking in Switzerland is always more delight than fatigue. But it is actually a two hours’ walk. Our private way is easier and prettier.”

“Au revoir!” smiled Madame Dimitrius. “You, Féodor, will be in to luncheon,—and you, Miss May?——”

“I give her leave of absence till the afternoon,” said Dimitrius. “She must return in time for that English consoler of trouble—tea!” He laughed, and with a light parting salute to his mother, preceded Diana by a few steps to show the way. She paused a moment with a look half shy, half wistful at the kindly Madame Dimitrius.

“Will you try to like me?” she said, softly. “Somehow, I have missed being liked! But I don’t think I’m really a disagreeable person!”

Madame took her gently by both hands and kissed her.

“Have courage, my dear!” she said. “I like you already! You will be a help to my son,—and I feel that you will be patient with him! That will be enough to win more than my liking—my love!”

With a grateful look and smile Diana nodded a brief adieu, and followed Dimitrius, who was already in the garden waiting for her.

“Women must always have the last word!” he said, with a good-humoured touch of irony. “And even when they are enemies, they kiss!”

She raised her eyes frankly to his.

“That’s true!” she answered. “I’ve seen a lot of it! But your mother and I could never be enemies, and I—well, I am grateful for even a ‘show’ of liking.”

He looked surprised.

“Have you had so little?” he queried. “And you care for it?”

“Does not everyone care for it?”

“No. For example, I do not. I have lived too long to care. I know what love or liking generally mean—love especially. It means a certain amount of pussy-cat comfort for one’s self. Now, though all my efforts are centred on comfort in the way of perfect health and continuous enjoyment of life for this ‘Self’ of ours, I do not care for the mere pussy-cat pleasure of being fondled to see if I will purr. I have no desire to be a purring animal.”

Diana laughed—a gay, sweet laugh that rang out as clearly and youthfully as a girl’s. He gave her a quick, astonished glance.

“I amuse you?” he inquired, with a slight touch of irritation.

“Yes, indeed! But don’t be vexed because I laugh! You—you mustn’t imagine that anybody wants to make you ‘purr!’ I don’t! I’d rather you growled, like a bear!” She laughed again. “We shall get on splendidly together,—I know we shall!”

He walked a few paces in silence.

“I think you are younger than you profess to be,” he said, at last.

“I wish I were!” she answered, fervently. “Alas, alas! it’s no use wishing. I cannot ‘go like a crab, backwards.’ Though just now I feel like a mere kiddie, ready to run all over these exquisite gardens and look at everything, and find out all the prettiest nooks and corners. What a beautiful place this is!—and how fortunate I am to have found favour in your eyes! It will be perfect happiness for me just to live here!”

Dimitrius looked pleased.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said—and taking a key from his pocket, he handed it to her. “Here we are coming to the border of the lake, and you can go on alone. Follow the private path till you come to a gate which this key will open—then turn to the left, up a little winding flight of steps, under trees—this will bring you out to the high road. I suppose you know the way to your hotel when you are once in the town?”

“Yes,—and I shall know my way back again to the Château this afternoon,” she assured him. “It’s kind of you to have come thus far with me. You are breaking your morning’s work.”

He smiled. “My morning’s work can wait,” he said. “In fact, most of my work must wait—till you come!”

With these words he raised his hat in courteous salutation and left her, turning back through his grounds—while she went on her way swiftly and alone.

CHAPTER VIII

Arrived at her hotel, Diana gave notice that she was leaving that afternoon. Then she packed up her one portmanteau and sent it by a porter to the station, with instructions to deposit it in the “Salle des Bagages,” to await her there. He carried out this order, and brought the printed number entitling her to claim her belongings at her convenience.

“Madame is perhaps going to Vevy or to Montreux?” he suggested, cheerfully. “The journey is pleasanter by boat than by the train.”

“No doubt!—yes, of course!—I am quite sure it is!” murmured the astute Diana with an abstracted smile, giving him a much larger “tip” than he expected, which caused him to snatch off his cap and stand with uncovered head, as in the presence of a queen. “But I have not made up my mind where I shall go first. Perhaps to Martigny—perhaps only to Lausanne. I am travelling for my own amusement.”

“Ah, oui! Je comprends! Bonne chance, Madame!” and the porter backed reverently away from the wonderful English lady who had given him five francs, when he had only hoped for one,—and left her to her own devices. Thereupon she went to her room, locked the door, and wrote the following letter to Sophy Lansing:

“Dearest Sophy,

“Please find enclosed, as business people say, an English bank-note for a hundred pounds, which I think clears me of my debt to you in the way of money, though not of gratitude. By my ‘paying up’ so soon, you will judge that I have ‘fallen on my feet’—and that I have accepted ‘service’ under Dr. Dimitrius. What is more, and what will please you most, is that I am entirely satisfied with my situation, and am likely to be better off and happier than I have been for many years. The Doctor does not appear to be at all an ‘eccentric,’—he is evidently a bona-fide scientist, engaged, as he tells me, in working out difficult problems of chemistry, in which I hope and believe I may be of some use to him by attending to smaller matters of detail only; he has a most beautiful place on the outskirts of Geneva, in which I have been allotted a charming suite of rooms with the loveliest view of the Alps from the windows,—and last, by no means least, he has a perfectly delightful mother, a sweet old lady with snow-white hair and the ‘grand manner,’ who has captivated both my heart and imagination at once. So you may realise how fortunate I am! Everything is signed and settled; and there is only one stipulation Dr. Dimitrius makes, and this is, that while I am working with him, I may neither write nor receive letters. Now I have no one I really care to write to except you; moreover, it is impossible for me to write to anyone, as I am supposed to be dead! So it all fits in very well as it should. You, of course, know nothing about me, save that I was unfortunately drowned!—and when you see ‘Pa’ and ‘Ma’ clothed in their parental mourning, you will, I hope, manage to shed a few friendly tears with them over my sudden departure from this world. (N.B. A scrap of freshly cut onion secreted in your handkerchief would do the trick!) I confess I should have liked to know your impression of my bereaved parents when you see them for the first time since my ‘death!’—but I must wait. Meanwhile, you can be quite easy in your mind about me, for I consider myself most fortunate. I have a splendid salary—a thousand a year!—just think of it!—a thousand Pounds, not Francs!—and a perfectly enchanting home, with every comfort and luxury. I am indeed ‘dead’ as the poor solitary woman who devoted her soul to the service of ‘Pa’ and ‘Ma’; a new Diana May has sprung from the ashes of the old spinster!—it is exactly as if I had really died and been born again! All the world seems new; I breathe the air of a delicious and intelligent freedom such as I have never known. I shall think of you very often, you bright, kind, clever little Sophy!—and if I get the chance, I will now and then send you a few flowers,—or a book,—merely as a hint to you that all is well. But, in any case, whether you receive such a hint or not, have no misgivings or fears in regard to me;—for years I haven’t been so happy or so well off as I am now. I’m more than thankful that my lonely hours of study have not been entirely wasted, and that what I have learned may prove of some use at last. Now, dear Sophy, au revoir! Your good wishes for me are being fulfilled; my ‘poor brain so long atrophied by domestic considerations of Pa and Ma,’ as you put it, is actually expanding!—and who knows?—your prophecy may come true—Cinderella may yet go to the Prince’s Ball! If I have cause to resign my present post, I will write to you at once; but not till then. This you will understand. I have registered this letter so that really there is no need for you to acknowledge its receipt,—the post-office may be relied upon to deliver it to you safely. And I think it is perhaps best you should not write.

“Much love and grateful thanks for all your help and kindness to

“Your ‘departed’ friend,
“Diana May.”

This letter, with its bank-note enclosure, she sealed; and then, taking a leisurely walk along the Rue du Mont Blanc to the General Post Office, she patiently filled in the various formal items for the act of registration which the Swiss postal officials make so overwhelmingly tiresome and important, and finally got her packet safely despatched. This done, she felt as if the last link binding her to her former life was severed. Gone was “Pa”; gone was “Ma!”—gone were the few faded sentiments she had half unconsciously cherished concerning the man she had once loved and who had heartlessly “jilted” her,—gone, too, were a number of sad and solitary years,—gone, as if they had been a few unimportant numerals wiped off a slate,—and theirs was the strangest “going” of all. For she had lived through those years,—most surely she had lived through them,—yet now it did not seem as if they had ever been part of her existence. They had suddenly become a blank. They counted for nothing except the recollection of long hours of study. Something new and vital touched her inner consciousness,—a happiness, a lightness, a fresh breathing-in of strength and self-reliance. From the Rue du Mont Blanc she walked to the Pont, and stood there, gazing for some time at the ravishing view that bridge affords of the lake and mountains. The sun shone warmly with that mellow golden light peculiar to early autumn, and the water was blue as a perfect sapphire, flecked by tiny occasional ripples of silver, like sudden flashing reflections of sunbeams in a mirror; one or two pleasure-boats with picturesque “lateen” sails looked like great sea-birds slowly skimming along on one uplifted wing. The scene was indescribably lovely, and a keen throb of pure joy pulsated through her whole being, moving her to devout thankfulness for simply being alive, and able to comprehend such beauty.

“If I had been really and truly drowned I think it would have been a pity!” she thought, whimsically. “Not on account of any grief it might have caused—for I have no one to grieve for me,—but solely on my own part, for I should have been senseless, sightless, and tucked away in the earth, instead of being here in the blessed sunshine! No!—I shouldn’t have been tucked away in the earth, unless they had found my body and had a first-class funeral with Ma’s usual wreath lying on the coffin,—I should have been dashed about in the sea, and eaten by the fishes. Not half so pleasant as standing on the Pont du Mont Blanc and looking at the snowy line of the Alps! When people commit suicide they don’t think, poor souls!—they don’t realise that there’s more happiness to be got out of the daily sunshine than either money, food, houses, or friends can ever give! And one can live on very little, if one tries.” Here she laughed. “Though I shall have no chance to try! A thousand a year for a single woman, with a lovely home and ‘board’ thrown in, does not imply much effort in managing to keep body and soul together! Of course my work may be both puzzling and strenuous—I wonder what it will really be?”

And she started again on her old crusade of “wonder.” Yet she did not find anything particular to wonder at in the appearance, manner, or conversation of Dr. Dimitrius. She had always “wondered” at stupidity,—but never at intelligence. Dimitrius spoke intelligently and looked intelligent; he did not “pose” as a wizard or a seer, or a prophet. And she felt sure that his mother would not limit her conversation to the various items of domestic business; she could not fancy her as becoming excited over a recipe for jam, or the pattern for a blouse. This variety of subjects were the conversational stock-in-trade of English suburban misses and matrons whose talk on all occasions is little more than a luke-warm trickle of words which mean nothing. There would be some intellectual stimulus in the Dimitrius household,—of that she felt convinced. But in what branch of scientific research, or what problem of chemistry her services would be required, she could not, with all her capacity for wondering, form any idea.

She walked leisurely back to the hotel, looking at the shops on her way,—at the little carved wooden bears carrying pin-cushions, pen-trays and pipe-racks,—at the innumerable clocks, with chimes and without,—at the “souvenirs” of pressed and mounted edelweiss, inscribed with tender mottoes suitable for lovers to send to one another in absence,—and before one window full of these she paused, smiling.

“What nonsense it all is!” she said to herself. “I used to keep the faded petals of any little flower I chanced to see in his buttonhole, and put them away in envelopes marked with his initials and the date!—what a fool I was!—as great a fool as that sublime donkey, Juliette Drouet, who raved over her ‘little man’, Victor Hugo! And the silly girls who send this edelweiss from Switzerland to the men they are in love with, ought just to see what those men do with it! That would cure them! Like the Professor who totalled up his butcher’s bill on the back of one of Charlotte Bronté’s fervent letters, nine out of ten of them are likely to use it as a ‘wedge’ to keep a window or door from rattling!”

Amused with her thoughts, she went on, reached her hotel and had luncheon, after which she paid her bill. “Madame is leaving us?” said the cheery dame du comptoir, speaking very voluble French. “Alas, we are sorry her stay is so short! Madame goes on to Montreux, no doubt?”

“Madame” smiled at the amiable woman’s friendly inquisitiveness.

“No,” she answered.—“And yet—perhaps—yes! I am taking a long holiday and hope to see all the prettiest places in Switzerland!”

“Ah, there is much that is grand—beautiful!” declared the proprietress. “You will occupy much time! You will perhaps return here again?”

“Oh, yes! That is very likely!” replied Diana, with a flagrant assumption of candour. “I have been very comfortable here.”

“Madame is too good to say so! We are charmed! The luggage has gone to the station? Yes? That is well! Au revoir, Madame!”

And with many gracious nods and smiles and repeated au revoirs, Diana escaped at last, and went towards the station, solely for the benefit of the hotel people, servants included, who stood at the doorway watching her departure. But once out of their sight she turned rapidly down a side street which she had taken note of in the morning, and soon found her way to the close little alley under trees with the steps which led to the border of the lake, but which was barred to strangers and interlopers by an iron gate through which she had already passed, and of which she had the key. There was no difficulty in unlocking it and locking it again behind her, and she drew a long breath of relief and satisfaction when she found herself once more in the grounds of the Château Fragonard.

“There!” she said half aloud—“I have shut away the old world!—welcome to the new! I’m ready for anything now—life or death!—anything but the old jog-trot, loveless days of monotonous commonplace,—there will be something different here. Loveless I shall always be—but I’m beginning to think there’s another way of happiness than love!—though old Thomas à Kempis says: ‘Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller and better in Heaven and earth’; but he meant the love of God, not the love of man.”

She grew serious and absorbed in thought, yet not so entirely abstracted as to be unconscious of the beauty of the gardens through which she was walking,—the well-kept lawns, the beds and borders of flowers,—the graceful pergolas of climbing roses, and the shady paths which went winding in and out through shrubberies and under trees, here and there affording glimpses of the lake, glittering as with silver and blue. Presently at a turn in one of these paths she had a view of the front of the Château Fragonard, with its fountains in full play on either side, and was enchanted with the classic purity of its architectural design, which seemed evidently copied from some old-world model of an Athenian palace.

“I don’t think it’s possible to see anything lovelier!” she said to herself. “And what luck it is for me to live here! Who could have guessed it! It’s like a dream of fairyland!”

She gathered a rose hanging temptingly within reach, and fastened it in her bodice.

“Let me see!” she went on, thinking—“It’s just a week since I was ‘drowned’ in Devon! Such a little while!—why Ma hasn’t had time yet to get her mourning properly fitted! And Pa! I wonder how he really ‘carries’ himself, as they say, under his affliction! I think it will be a case of ‘bearing up wonderfully,’ for both of them. One week!—and my little boat of life, tied so long by a worn rope to a weedy shore, has broken adrift and floated away by itself to a veritable paradise of new experience. But,—am I counting too much on my good fortune, I wonder? Perhaps there will be some crushing drawback,—some terrorizing influence—who knows! And yet—I think not. Anyhow, I have signed, sealed, and delivered myself over to my chosen destiny;—it is wiser to hope for the best than imagine the worst.”

Arrived at the hall door of the Château she found it open, and passed in unquestioned, as an admitted member of the household. She saw a neat maid busying herself with the arrangement of some flowers, and of her she asked the way to her rooms. The girl at once preceded her up the wide staircase and showed her the passage leading to the beautiful suite of apartments she had seen in the morning, remarking:

“Madame will be quite private here,—this passage is shut off from the rest of the house, and is an entry to these rooms only, and if Madame wants any service she will ring and I will come. My name is Rose.”

“Thank you, Rose!” and Diana smiled at her, feeling a sense of relief to know that she could have the attention of a simple ordinary domestic such as this pleasant-looking little French femme-de-chambre,—for somehow she had connected the dumb negro who had at first admitted her to the Château with a whole imagined retinue of mysterious persons, sworn to silence in the service of Dimitrius. “I will not trouble you more than I can help—hark!—what is that noise?”

A low, organ-like sound as of persistent thudding and humming echoed around her,—it suggested suppressed thunder. The girl Rose looked quite unconcerned.

“Oh, that is the machine in the Doctor’s laboratory,” she said. “But it does not often make any noise. We do not know quite what it is,—we are not permitted to see!” She smiled, and added: “But Madame will not long be disturbed—it will soon cease.”

And indeed the thunderous hum died slowly away as she spoke, leaving a curious sense of emptiness on the air. Diana still listened, vaguely fascinated,—but the silence remained unbroken. Rose nodded brightly, in pleased affirmation of her own words, and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Alone, Diana went to the window and looked out. What a glorious landscape was spread before her!—what a panorama of the Divine handiwork in Nature! Tears sprang to her eyes—tears, not of sorrow, but of joy.

“I hope I am grateful enough!” she thought. “For now I have every reason to be grateful. I tried hard to feel grateful for all my blessings at home,—yet somehow I couldn’t be!—there seemed no way out of the daily monotony—no hope anywhere!—but now—now, with all this unexpected good luck I could sing ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow!’ with more fervour than any Salvationist!”

She went into the cosy bedroom which adjoined her salon to see if she looked neat and well-arranged enough in her dress to go down to tea,—there was a long mirror there, and in it she surveyed herself critically. Certainly that navy “model” gown suited her slim figure to perfection—“And,” she said to herself, “if people only looked at my hair and my too, too scraggy shape, they might almost take me for ‘young!’ But woe’s me!”—and she touched the corners of her eyes with the tips of her fingers—“here are the wicked crow’s-feet!—they won’t go!—and the ‘lines from nose to chin’ which the beauty specialists offer to eradicate and can’t,—the ugly ruts made by Time’s unkind plough and my own too sorrowful habit of thought,—they won’t go, either! However, here it doesn’t matter,—the Doctor wanted ‘a woman of mature years’—and he’s got her!” She smiled cheerfully at herself in the mirror which reflected a shape that was graceful in its outline if somewhat too thin—“distinctly willowy” as she said—and then she began thinking about clothes, like any other feminine creature. She was glad Sophy had made her buy two charming tea-gowns, and one very dainty evening party frock; and she was now anxious to give the “number” of the luggage she had left at the Salle des Bagages to Dr. Dimitrius, so that it might be sent for without delay. Meanwhile she looked at all the elegancies of her rooms, and noted the comfort and convenience with which everything was arranged. One novelty attracted and pleased her,—this was a small round dial, put up against the wall, and marked with the hours at which meals were served. A silver arrow, seemingly moved by interior clockwork, just now pointed to “Tea, five o’clock,” and while she was yet looking at it, a musical little bell rang very persistently behind the dial for about a minute, and then ceased.

“Tea-time, of course!” she said, and glancing at her watch she saw it was just five o’clock. “What a capital invention! One of these in each room saves all the ugly gong-beating and bell-ringing which is common in most houses; I had better go.”

She went at once, running down the broad staircase with light feet as buoyantly as a girl, and remembering her way easily to the room where she had breakfasted in the morning. Madame Dimitrius was there alone, knitting placidly, and looking the very picture of contentment. She smiled a welcome as Diana entered.

“So you have come back to us!” she said. “I am very glad! One lady who answered my son’s advertisement, went to see after her luggage in the same manner as you were told to do—and—ran away!”

“Ran away!” echoed Diana. “What for?”

The old lady laughed.

“Oh, I think she got afraid at the last moment! Something my son said, or looked, scared her! But he was not surprised,—he has always given every applicant a chance to run away!”

“Not me!” said Diana, merrily. “For he made me sign an agreement, and gave me some of my salary in advance—he would hardly expect me to run away with his money?”

“Why not?” and Dimitrius himself entered the room. “Why not, Miss May? Many a woman and many a man has been known to make short work with an agreement,—what is it but ‘a scrap of paper’? And there are any number of Humans who would judge it ‘clever’ to run off with money confidingly entrusted to them!”

“You are cynical,” said Diana. “And I don’t think you mean what you say. You know very well that honour stands first with every right-thinking man or woman.”

“Right-thinking! Oh, yes!—I grant you that,”—and he drew a chair up to the tea-table where his mother had just seated herself. “But ‘right-thinking’ is a compound word big enough to cover a whole world of ethics and morals. If ‘right-thinking’ were the rule instead of the exception, we should have a real Civilisation instead of a Sham!”

Diana looked at him more critically and attentively than she had yet done. His personality was undeniably attractive,—some people would have considered him handsome. He had wonderful eyes,—they were his most striking feature—dark, deep, and sparkling with a curiously brilliant intensity. He had spoken of his Russian nationality, but there was nothing of the Kalmuck about him,—much more of the picturesque Jew or Arab. An indefinable grace distinguished his movements, unlike the ordinary type of lumbersome man, who, without military or other training, never seems to know what to do with his hands or his feet. He noticed Diana’s intent study of him, and smiled—a charming smile, indulgent and kindly.

“I mystify you a little already!” he said. “Yes, I am sure I do!—but there are so many surprises in store for you that I think you had better not begin putting the pieces of the puzzle together till they are all out of the box! Never mind what I seem to you, or what I may turn out to be,—enjoy for the present the simple safety of the Commonplace; there’s nothing so balancing to the mind as a quiet contemplation of the tea-table! By the way, did you arrange about your luggage as I told you?”

Diana nodded a cheerful assent.

“Here’s the number,” she said. “And if you are going to send for it, would you do so quite soon? I want to change my dress for dinner.”

Dimitrius laughed as he took the number from her hand.

“Of course you do!” he said. “Even ‘a woman of mature years’ is never above looking her best! Armed with this precious slip of paper, I will send for your belongings at once——”

“It’s only a portmanteau,” put in Diana, meekly. “Not a Saratoga trunk.”

He gave her an amused look.

“Didn’t you bring any Paris ‘confections’?”

“I didn’t wait in Paris,” she replied. “I came straight on.”

“A long journey!” said Madame Dimitrius.

“Yes. But I was anxious to get here as soon as I could.”

“In haste to rush upon destiny!” observed Dimitrius, rising from the tea-table. “Well! Perhaps it is better than waiting for destiny to rush upon you! I will send for your luggage—it will be here in half an hour. Meanwhile, when you have quite finished your tea, will you join me in the laboratory?”

He left the room. Madame Dimitrius laid down her knitting needles and looked wistfully at Diana.

“I hope you will not be afraid of my son,” she said, “or offended at anything he may say. His brain is always working—always seeking to penetrate some new mystery,—and sometimes—from sheer physical fatigue—he may seem brusque,—but his nature is noble——”

She paused, with a slight trembling of the lip and sudden moisture in her kind blue eyes.

Impulsively, Diana took her thin delicate old hand and kissed it.

“Please don’t worry!” she said. “I am not easily offended, and I certainly shall not be afraid! I like your son very much, and I think we shall get on splendidly together—I do, indeed! I’m simply burning with impatience to be at work for him! Be quite satisfied that I shall do my best! I’m off to the laboratory now.”

She went with a swift, eager step, and on reaching the outer hall was unexpectedly confronted by the dumb negro who had at first admitted her to the Château. He made her a sign to follow him, and she obeyed. Down a long, winding, rather dark passage they went till their further progress was stopped by a huge door made of some iridescent metal which glowed as with interior fire. It was so enormously thick, and wide and lofty, and clamped with such weighty bars and mysteriously designed fastenings, that it might have been the door imagined by Dante when he wrote: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.” Diana felt her heart beating a little more quickly, but she kept a good grip on her nerves, and looked questioningly at her guide. His dark face gave no sign in response; he merely laid one hand on the centre panel of the door with a light pressure.

“Come in!” said the voice of Dimitrius. “Don’t hesitate!”

At that moment the whole door lifted itself as it were from a deep socket in the ground and swung upwards like the portcullis of an ancient bridge, only without any noise, disclosing a vast circular space covered in by a dome of glass, or some substance clearer than glass, through which the afternoon glory of the September sunshine blazed with an almost blinding intensity. Immediately under the dome, and in the exact centre of the circular floor, was a wonderful looking piece of mechanism, a great wheel which swept round and round incessantly and rapidly, casting from its rim millions and millions of sparks of light or fire.

“Come in!” again called Dimitrius. “Why do you stand waiting there?”

Diana looked back for a second,—the great metal door had closed behind her,—the negro attendant had disappeared,—she was shut within this great weird chamber with Dimitrius and that whirling Wheel! A sudden giddiness overcame her—she stretched out her hands blindly for support—they were instantly caught in a firm, kind grasp.

“Keep steady! That’s right!” This, as she rallied her forces and tried to look up. “It’s not easy to watch any sort of Spherical Motion without wanting to go with it among ‘the dancing stars!’ There! Better?”

“Indeed, yes! I’m so sorry and ashamed!” she said. “Such a stupid weakness! But I have never seen anything like it——”

“No, I’m sure you have not!” And Dimitrius released her hands and stood beside her. “To give you greater relief, I would stop the Wheel if I could—but I cannot!”

“You cannot?”

“No. Not till the daylight goes. Then it will gradually cease revolving of itself. It is only a very inadequate man-made exposition of one of the Divine mysteries of creation,—the force of Light which generates Motion, and from Motion, Life. Moses touched the central pivot of truth in his Book of Genesis when he wrote: ‘The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.... And God said, Let there be Light. And there was Light.’ From that ‘Light,’ the effulgence of God’s own Actual Presence and Intelligence, came the Movement which dispelled ‘darkness.’ Movement, once begun, shaped all that which before was ‘without form’ and filled all that had been ‘void.’ Light is the positive exhalation and pulsation of the Divine Existence—the Active Personality of an Eternal God;—Light, which enters the soul and builds the body of every living organism,—therefore Light is Life.”

CHAPTER IX

Diana listened to the quiet, emphatic tones of his voice in fascinated attention.

“Light is Life,” he repeated, slowly. “Light—and the twin portion of Light,—Fire. The Rosicrucians have come nearer than any other religious sect in the world to the comprehension of things divine. Darkness is Chaos,—not death, for there is no death—but confusion, bewilderment and blindness which gropes for a glory instinctively felt but unseen. In these latter days, science has discovered the beginning of the wonders of Light,—they have always existed, but we have not found them, ‘loving darkness rather than light.’ I say the ‘beginning of wonders,’ for with all our advancement we have only become dimly conscious of the first vibration of the Creator’s living presence. Light!—which is ‘God walking in His garden,’—which is colour, sound, heat, movement—all the Divine Power in eternal radiation and luminance!—this is Life;—and in this we live,—in this we may live, and renew our lives,—ay, and in this we may retain youth beyond age! If we only have courage!—courage and the will to learn!”

His brilliant dark eyes turned upon her with a searching steadfastness, and her heart beat quickly, for there was something in his look which suggested that it was from her he expected “courage and the will to learn.” But she made no comment. Suddenly, and with an abrupt movement, he pulled with both hands at a lever apparently made of steel,—like one of the handles in a signal-box,—and with his action the level floor beneath the great revolving wheel yawned asunder, showing a round pool of water, black as ink and seemingly very deep. Diana recoiled from it, startled. Dimitrius smiled.

“Suppose I asked you to jump in?” he said.

She thought a moment.

“Well,—I should want to take off my dress first,” she answered. “It’s a new one.”

He laughed.

“And then?”

“Then?—Why, then I shouldn’t mind!” she said. “I can swim.”

“You would not be afraid?”

She met his eyes bravely.

“No—I should not be afraid!”

“Upon my word, I believe you! You’re a plucky woman! But then you’ve nothing to lose by your daring, having lost all—so you told me. What do you mean by having lost all?”

“I mean just what I say,” she replied quietly. “Father, mother, home, lover, youth, beauty and hope! Isn’t that enough to lose?”

And, as she spoke, she gazed almost unseeingly at the wonderful Wheel as it whirled round and round, glittering with a thousand colours which were reflected in the dark mirror of the water below it. The sun was sinking, and the light through the over-arching glass dome was softer, and with each minute became more subdued,—and she noted with keen interest that the revolution of the wheel was less rapid and dizzying to the eye.

“Enough to lose—yes!” said Dimitrius. “But the loss is quite common. Most of us, as we get on in life, lose father and mother, home, and even lover!—but that we should lose youth, beauty and hope is quite our own affair! We ought to know better!” She looked at him in surprise.

“How should we know better?” she asked. “Age must come,—and with age the wrinkling and spoiling of all beautiful faces, to say nothing of the aches and pains and ailments common to a general break-up of the body-cells. We cannot defy the law of Nature.”

“That is precisely what we are always doing!” said Dimitrius. “And that is why we make such trouble for ourselves. We not only defy the law of Nature in a bodily sense by over-eating, over-drinking and over-breeding, but we ignore it altogether in a spiritual sense. We forget,—and wilfully forget, that the body is only the outward manifestation of a Soul-creature, not the Soul-creature itself. So we starve the Light and feed the Shadow, and then foolishly wonder that, with the perishing Light, the Shadow is absorbed in darkness.”

He pulled at the steel lever again, and the mysterious pool of water became swiftly and noiselessly covered as part of the apparently solid ground.

“One more thing before we go,” he resumed, and, taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked a tiny door no bigger than the door of a child’s doll house. “Come and see!”

Diana obeyed, and bending down to peer into the small aperture disclosed, saw therein a tube or pipe no thicker than a straw, from which fell slowly drop by drop a glittering liquid into a hollow globe of crystal. So brilliant and fiery was the colour of this fluid, that it might have been an essence of the very sunlight. She looked at Dimitrius in silent inquiry. He said nothing—and presently she ventured to ask in a half whisper:

“What is it?”

His expression, as he turned and faced her, was so rapt and transfigured as to be quite extraordinary.

“It is life,—or it is death!” he answered. “It is my Great Experiment of which you will be the practical test! Ah, now you look amazed indeed!—your eyes are almost young in wonder!—and yet I see no fear! That is well! Now think and understand! All this mechanism,—which is far more complex than you can imagine,—this dome of crystal above us,—this revolving wheel moved by Light alone,—the deep water beneath us through which the condensed and vibrating Light rushes with electric speed,—these million whirling atoms of fire,—all this, I say, is merely—remember!—merely to produce these miniature drops, smaller by many degrees than a drop of dew, and so slowly are they distilled, that it has taken me ten years to draw from these restless and opposing elements a sufficient quantity for my great purpose. Ten years!—and after all, who knows? All my thought and labour may be wasted!—I may have taken the wrong road! The fiery sword turns every way, and even now I may fail!”

His face darkened,—the hope and radiance died out of it and left it grey and drawn—almost old. Diana laid her hand on his arm with a soft, consoling touch.

“Why should you fail?” she asked, gently. “You yourself know the object of your quest and the problem you seek to solve,—and I am sure you have missed no point that could avail to lead you in the right direction. And if, as I now imagine, you need a human life to risk itself in the ultimate triumph of your work, you have mine entirely at your service. As I have told you several times already, I am not afraid!”

He took the hand that lay upon his arm and kissed it with grave courtesy.

“I thank you!” he said. “I feel that you are perfectly sincere—and honesty always breeds courage. Understand, my mother has never seen this workshop of mine—she would be terrified. The dome was built for me by my French architect, ostensibly for astronomical purposes—the rest of the mechanism, bit by bit, was sent to me from different parts of the world and I put it up myself assisted only by Vasho, my negro servant, who is dumb. So my secret is, as far as possible, well kept.”

“I shall not betray it,” said Diana, simply.

He smiled.

“I know you will not,” he answered.

With almost a miser’s care he locked the tiny door which concealed the mystery of the fiery-golden liquid dropping so slowly, almost reluctantly, into its crystal receptacle. The sun had sunk below the horizon, and shadows began to creep over the clearness of the dome above them, while the great Wheel turned at a slower pace—and ever more slowly as the light grew dim.

“We will go now,” he said. “One or two ordinary people are coming to dine—and your luggage will have arrived. I want you to live happily here, and healthfully—your health is a most important consideration with me. You look thin and delicate——”

“I am thin—to positive scragginess,” interrupted Diana, “but I am not delicate.”

“Well, that may be; but you must keep strong. You will need all your strength in the days to come.”

They were at the closed door of the laboratory, which by some unseen contrivance, evidently controlled by the pressure of the hand against a particular panel, swung upwards in the same way as it had done before, and when they passed out, slid downwards again behind them. They were in the corridor now, dimly lit by one electric lamp.

“You are not intimidated by anything I have shown you?” said Dimitrius, then. “After all, you are a woman and entitled to ‘nerves!’”

“Quite so,—nerves properly organised and well under control,” answered Diana, quietly. “I am full of wonder at what I have seen, but I am not intimidated.”

“Good!” And a sudden smile lit up his face, giving it a wonderful charm. “Now run away and dress for dinner! And don’t puzzle yourself by thinking about anything for the present. If you must think, wait till you are alone with night and the stars!”

He left her, and she went upstairs at once to her own rooms. Here repose and beauty were expressed in all her surroundings and she looked about her with a sigh of comfort and appreciation. Some careful hand had set vases of exquisitely arranged flowers here and there,—and the scent of roses, carnations and autumn violets made the already sweet air sweeter. She found her modest luggage in her bedroom, and set to work unpacking and arranging her clothes.

“He’s quite right,—I mustn’t think!” she said to herself. “It would never do! That wheel grinding out golden fire!—that mysterious pool of water in which one might easily be drowned and never heard of any more!—and those precious drops, locked up in a tiny hole!—what can all these things mean? There!—I’m thinking and I mustn’t think! But—is he mad, I wonder? Surely not! No madman ever put up such a piece of mechanism as that Wheel! I’m thinking again!—I mustn’t think!—I mustn’t think!”

She soon had all her garments unpacked, shaken out, and arranged in their different places, and, after some cogitation, decided to wear for the evening one of the Parisian “rest” or “tea” gowns her friend Sophy Lansing had chosen for her,—a marvellous admixture of palest rose and lilac hues, with a touch or two of pearl glimmerings among lace like moonlight on foam. She took some pains to dress her pretty hair becomingly, twisting it up high on her small, well-shaped head, and when her attire was complete she surveyed herself in the long mirror with somewhat less dissatisfaction than she was accustomed to do.

“Not so bad!” she inwardly commented, approving the picturesque fall and flow of the rose and lilac silk and chiffon which clung softly round her slim figure. “You are not entirely repulsive yet, Diana!—not yet! But you will be!—never fear! Just wait a little!—wait till your cheeks sink in a couple of bony hollows and your throat looks like the just-wrung neck of a scrawny fowl!” Here she laughed, with a quaint amusement at the unpleasant picture she was making of herself in the future. “Yes, my dear! Not all the clouds of rosy chiffon in the world will hide your blemishes then!—and your hair!—oh, your hair will be a sort of grizzled ginger and you’ll have to hide it! So you’d better enjoy this little interval—it won’t last long!” Suddenly at this point in her soliloquy some words uttered by Dimitrius rang back on her memory: “That we should lose youth, beauty and hope is quite our own affair. We ought to know better.” She repeated them slowly once or twice. “Strange!—a very strange thing to say!” she mused. “I wonder what he meant by it? I’m sure if it had been my ‘own affair’ to keep youth, beauty and hope, I would never have lost them! Oddly enough I seem to have got back a little scrap of one of the losses—hope! But I’m thinking again—I mustn’t think!”

She curtsied playfully to her own reflection in the mirror, and seeing by the warning “time dial” for meals that it was nearly the dinner hour, she descended to the drawing-room. Three or four people were assembled there, talking to Madame Dimitrius, who introduced Diana as “Miss May, an English friend of ours who is staying with us for the winter”—an announcement which Diana herself tacitly accepted as being no doubt what Dr. Dimitrius wished. The persons to whom she was thus presented were the Baroness Rousillon, a handsome Frenchwoman of possibly fifty-six or sixty,—her husband, the Baron, a stout, cheerful personage with a somewhat aggravating air of perpetual bonhomie,—Professor Chauvet, a very thin little old gentleman with an aquiline nose and drooping eyelids from which small, sparkling dark eyes gleamed out occasionally like needle-points, and a certain Marchese Luigi Farnese, a rather sinister-looking dark young man, with a curiously watchful expression, as of one placed on guard over some hidden secret treasure. They were all exceedingly amiable, and asked Diana the usual polite questions,—whether she had had a pleasant journey from England?—was the Channel rough?—was the weather fine?—was she a good sailor?—and so on, all of which she answered pleasantly in that sweet and musical voice which always attracted and charmed her hearers.

“And you come from England!” said Professor Chauvet, blinking at her through his eyelids. “Ah! it is a strange place!”

Diana smiled, but said nothing.

“It is a strange place!” reiterated the Professor, with more emphasis. “It is a place of violent contrasts without any intermediate tones. Stupidity and good sense, moral cowardice and physical courage, petty grudging and large generosity, jostle each other in couples all through English society, yet after, and with these drawbacks, it is very attractive!”

“I’m so glad you like it,” said Diana, cheerfully. “I expect the same faults can be found in all countries and with all nations. We English are not the worst people in the world!”

“By no means!” conceded the Professor, inclining his head courteously. “You might almost claim to be the best—if it were not for France,—and Italy,—and Russia!”

The Baroness Rousillon smiled.

“How clever of you, Professor!” she said. “You are careful to include all nationalities here present in your implied compliment, and so you avoid argument!”

“Madame, I never argue with a lady!” he replied. “First, because it is bad manners, and second, because it is always useless!”

They all laughed, with the gentle tolerance of persons who know an old saying by heart. Just then Dr. Dimitrius entered and severally greeted his guests. Despite her efforts to seem otherwise entertained, Diana found herself watching his every movement and trying to hear every word he said. Only very few men look well in evening dress, and he was one of those few. A singular distinction marked his bearing and manner; in any assemblage of notable people he would have been assuredly selected as one of the most attractive and remarkable. Once he caught her eyes steadfastly regarding him, and smiled encouragingly. Whereat she coloured deeply and felt ashamed of her close observation of him. He took the Baroness Rousillon in to dinner, the Baron following with Madame Dimitrius, and Diana was left with a choice between two men as her escort. She looked in smiling inquiry at both. Professor Chauvet settled the point.

“Marchese, you had better take Miss May,” he said, addressing the dark Italian. “I never allow myself to go in to dinner with any woman—it’s my habit always to go alone.”

“How social and independent of you!” said Diana, gaily, accepting the Marchese’s instantly proffered arm. “You like to be original?—or is it only to attract attention to yourself?”

The Professor opened his eyes to their fullest extent under their half-shut lids. Here was an Englishwoman daring to quiz him!—or, as the English themselves would say, “chaff” him! He coughed, glared, and tried to look dignified, but failed,—and was fain to trot, or rather shuffle, in to the dining-room somewhat meekly at the trailing end of Diana’s rose and lilac chiffon train. When they were all seated at table, he looked at her with what was, for him, unusual curiosity, realising that she was not quite an “ordinary” sort of woman. He began to wonder about her, and where she came from,—it was all very well to say “from England”—but up to now, all conversation had been carried on in French, and her French had no trace whatever of the British accent. She sat opposite to him, and he had good opportunity to observe her attentively, though furtively. She was talking with much animation to the Marchese Farnese,—her voice had the most enchanting modulation of tone,—and, straining his ears to hear what she was saying, he found she was speaking Italian. At this he was fairly nonplussed and somewhat annoyed—he did not speak Italian himself. All his theories respecting the British female were upset. No British female—he said this inwardly—no single one of the species in his knowledge, talked the French of France, or the Italian of Tuscany. He watched her with an almost grudging interest. She was not young,—she was not old.

“Some man has had the making or the marring of her!” he thought, crossly. “No woman ever turned herself out with such aplomb and savoir faire!”

Meanwhile Diana was enjoying her dinner. She was cleverly “drawing out” her partner at table, young Farnese, who proved to be passionately keen on all scientific research, and particularly so on the mysterious doings of Féodor Dimitrius. Happy to find himself next to a woman who spoke his native tongue with charm and fluency, he “let himself go” freely.

“I suppose you have known Dr. Dimitrius for some time?” he asked.

Diana thought for a second,—then replied promptly:

“Oh, yes!”

“He’s a wonderful man!” said Farnese. “Wonderful! I have myself witnessed his cures of cases given up by all other doctors as hopeless. I have asked him to accept me as a student under him, but he will not. He has some mystery which he will allow no one but himself to penetrate.”

“Really!” and Diana lifted her eyebrows in an arch of surprise. “He has never given me that impression.”

“Ah, no!” and Farnese smiled rather darkly. “He would not appear in that light to one of your sex. He does not care for women. His own mother is not really aware of the nature of his studies or the object of his work. Nobody has his confidence. As you are a friend of his you must know this quite well?”

“Oh, yes!—yes, of course!” murmured Diana, absently. “But nobody expects a very clever man to explain himself to his friends—or to the public. He must always do his work more or less alone.”

“I agree!” said the Marchese. “And this is why I cannot understand the action of Dimitrius in advertising for an assistant——”

“Oh, has he done so?” inquired Diana, indifferently.

“Yes,—for the last couple of months he has put a most eccentric advertisement in many of the journals, seeking the services of an elderly woman as assistant or secretary—I don’t know which. It’s some odd new notion of his, and, I venture to think, rather a mistaken one—for if he will not trust a man student, how much less can he rely on an old woman!”

“Eccellenza, you are talking to a woman now,” said Diana, calmly. “But never mind! Go on—and don’t apologise!”

Farnese’s dark olive skin flushed red.

“But I must!” he stammered, awkwardly. “I ask a thousand pardons!”

She glanced at him sideways with a laughing look.

“You are forgiven!” she said. “Women are quite hardened to the ironies and satires of your sex upon us,—and if we have any cleverness at all we are more amused by them than offended. For we know you cannot do without us! But certainly it is very odd that Dr. Dimitrius should advertise for an old woman! I never heard anything quite so funny!”

“He does not, I think, advertise for an actually old woman,” said Farnese, relieved to find that she had taken his clumsy remark so lightly. “The advertisement when I saw it mentioned a woman of mature years.”

“Oh, well, that’s a polite way of saying an old woman, isn’t it?” smiled Diana. “And—do tell me!—has he got her?”

“Why no!—not yet. Probably he will not get her at all. Even let us suppose a woman offered herself who admitted that she was ‘of mature years,’ that very fact would be sufficient proof of her incapacity.”

“Indeed!” and Diana lifted her eyebrows again. “Why?”

The Marchese smiled a superior smile.

“Perhaps I had better not explain!” he said. “But for a woman to arrive at ‘mature years’ without any interests in life except to offer her probably untrained services to a man she knows nothing of except through the medium of an advertisement is plain evidence that any such woman must be a fool!”

Diana laughed merrily—and her laughter was the prettiest ripple of music.

“Oh, yes!—of course! I see your meaning!” she said. “You are quite right! But after all perhaps the elderly female is only wanted to add up accounts, or write down measurements or something of that kind—just ordinary routine work. Some lonely old spinster with no claims upon her might be glad of such a chance——”

“Are you discussing my advertisement?” interrupted Dimitrius suddenly, sending a glance and smile at Diana from the head of the table. “I have withdrawn it.”

“Have you really?” said the Marchese. “That is not to say you are suited?”

“Suited? Oh, no! I shall never be suited! It was a foolish quest,—and I ought to have known better!” His dark eyes sparkled mirthfully. “You see I had rather forgotten the fact that no woman cares to admit she is ‘of mature years,’—I had also forgotten the well-known male formula that ‘no woman can be trusted.’ However, I have only lost a few hundred francs in my advertising—so I have nothing to regret except my own folly.”

“Had you many applications?” inquired Professor Chauvet.

Dimitrius laughed.

“Only one!” he answered, gaily. “And she was a poor lone lady who had lost all she thought worth living for. Of course she was—impossible!”

“Naturally!” and the Professor nodded sagaciously—“She would be!”

“What was she like?” asked Diana, with an amused look.

“Like no woman I have ever seen!” replied Dimitrius, smiling quizzically at her. “Mature, and fully ripened in her opinions,—fairly obstinate, and difficult to get rid of.”

“I congratulate you on having succeeded!” said Farnese.

“Succeeded? In what way?”

“In having got rid of her!”

“Oh, yes! But—I don’t think she wanted to go!”

“No woman ever wants to go if there’s a good-looking bachelor with whom she has any chance to stay!” said the Baron Rousillon, expanding his shirt front and smiling largely all round the table. “The ‘poor lone lady’ must have taken your rejection of her services rather badly.”

“That’s the way most men would look at it,” replied Dimitrius. “But, my dear Baron, I’m afraid we are rather narrow and primitive in our ideas of the fair sex—not to say conceited. It is quite our own notion that all women need us or find us desirable. Some women would much rather not be bored with us at all. One of the prettiest women I ever knew remained unmarried because, as she frankly said, she did not wish to be a housekeeper to any man or be bored by his perpetual company. There’s something in it, you know! Every man has his own particular ‘groove’ in which he elects to run—and in his ‘groove’ he’s apt to become monotonous and tiresome. That is why, when I advertised, I asked for a woman ‘of mature years,’—someone who had ‘settled down,’ and who would not find it wearisome to trot tamely alongside of my special ‘groove,’ but of course it was very absurd on my part to expect to find a woman of that sort who was at the same time well-educated and clever.”

“You should marry, my dear Dimitrius!—you should marry!” said the Baroness Rousillon, with a brilliant flash of her fine eyes and an encouraging smile.

“Never, my dear Baroness!—never!” he replied, with emphasis. “I am capable of many things, but not of that most arrant stupidity! Were I to marry, my work would be ruined—I should become immersed in the domesticities of the kitchen and the nursery, living my life at no higher grade than the life of the farmyard or rabbit-warren. In my opinion, marriage is a mistake,—but we must not argue such a point in the presence of a happily married couple like yourself and the Baron. Look at our excellent friend, Chauvet! He has never married.”

“Thank God!” ejaculated the Professor, devoutly,—while everybody laughed. “Ah, you may laugh! But it is I who laugh last! When I see the unfortunate husband going out for a slow walk with his wife and three or four screaming, jumping children, who behave like savages, not knowing what they want or where they wish to go, I bless my happy fate that I can do my ten miles a day alone, revelling in the beauty of the mountains and lakes, and enjoying my own thoughts in peace. Like Amriel, I have not married because I am afraid of disillusion!”

“But have you thought of the possible woman in the case?” asked Diana, sweetly and suddenly. “Might she not also suffer from ‘disillusion’ if you were her husband?”

Laughter again rang round the table,—the Professor rose, glass of wine in hand, and made Diana a solemn bow.

“Madame, I stand reproved!” he said. “And I drink to your health and to England, your native country! And in reply to your question, I am honest enough to say that I think any woman who had been so unfortunate as to marry me, would have put herself out of her misery a month after the wedding!”

Renewed merriment rewarded this amende honorable on the part of Chauvet, who sat down well pleased with himself—and well pleased, too, with Diana, whom he considered quick-witted and clever, and whose smile when he had made his little speech had quite won him over.

Madame Dimitrius, chiefly intent on the hospitable cares of the table, had listened to all the conversation with an old lady’s placid enjoyment, only putting in a word now and then, and smiling with affectionate encouragement at Diana, and dessert being presently served, and cigars and cigarettes handed round by the negro, Vasho, who was the sole attendant, she gave the signal for the ladies to retire.

“You do not smoke?” said the Marchese Farnese, as Diana moved from her place.

“No, indeed!”

“You dislike it?”

“For women,—yes.”

“Then you are old-fashioned!” he commented, playfully.

“Yes. And I am very glad of it!” she answered, quietly, and followed Madame Dimitrius and the Baroness Rousillon out of the room. As she passed Dimitrius, who held open the door for their exit, he said a few low-toned words in Russian which owing to her own study of the language she understood. They were:

“Excellent! You have kept your own counsel and mine, most admirably! I thank you with all my heart!”

CHAPTER X

That first evening in the Château Fragonard taught Diana exactly what was expected of her. It was evident that both Dimitrius and his mother chose to assume that she was a friend of theirs, staying with them on a visit, and she realised that she was not supposed to offer any other explanation of her presence. The famous advertisement had been “withdrawn,” and the Doctor had plainly announced that he was “not suited,” and that he had resigned all further quest of the person he had sought. That he had some good reason for disguising the real facts of the case Diana felt sure, and she was quite satisfied to fall in with his method of action. The more so, when she found herself an object of interest and curiosity to the Baroness Rousillon, who spared no effort to “draw her out” and gain some information as to her English home, her surroundings and ordinary associations. The Baroness had a clever and graceful way of cross-examining strangers through an assumption of friendliness, but Diana was equally clever and graceful in the art of “fence” and was not to be “drawn.” When the men left the dinner-table and came into the drawing-room she was placed as it were between two fires,—Professor Chauvet and the Marchese Farnese, both of whom were undisguisedly inquisitive, Farnese especially—and Diana was not slow to discover that his chief aim in conversing with her was to find out something,—anything—which could throw a light on the exact nature of the work in which Dimitrius was engaged. Perceiving this, she played with him like a shuttlecock, tossing him away from his main point whenever he got near it, much to his scarcely concealed irritation. Every now and again she caught a steel-like flash in the dark eyes of Dimitrius, who, though engaged in casual talk with the Baron and Baroness Rousillon, glanced at her occasionally in fullest comprehension and approval,—and somehow it became borne in upon her mind that if Farnese only knew the way to the scientist’s laboratory, he would have very little scruple about breaking into any part of it with the hope of solving its hidden problem.

“Why do you imagine there is any mystery about the Doctor’s works?” she asked him. “I know of none!”

“He would never let any woman know,” replied Farnese, with conviction. “But she might find out for herself if she were clever! There is a mystery without doubt. For instance, what is that great dome of glass which catches the sunlight on its roof and glitters in the distance, when I look towards the Château from my sailing boat on the lake——?”

“Oh, you have a sailing boat on the lake?” exclaimed Diana, clasping her hands in well-affected ecstasy. “How enchanting! Like Lord Byron, when he lived at the Villa Diodati!”

“Ah!” put in Professor Chauvet. “So you know your Byron! Then you are not one of the moderns?”

Diana smiled.

“No. I do not prefer Kipling to the author of ‘Childe Harold.’”

“Then you are lost—irretrievably lost!” said the Professor. “In England, at any rate. In England, if you are a true lover of literature, you must sneer at Byron because it’s academic to do so—Oxford and Cambridge have taken to decrying genius and worshipping mediocrity. Byron is the only English poet known and honoured in other countries than England—your modern verse writers are not understood in France, Italy or Russia. Half a dozen of Byron’s stanzas would set up all the British latter-day rhymers with ideas,—only, of course, they would never admit it. I’m glad I’ve met an Englishwoman who has sense enough to appreciate Byron.”

“Thank you!” said Diana in a small, meek voice. “You are most kind!”

Here Farnese rushed in again upon his argument.

“That glass dome——”

Diana smothered a tiny yawn.

“Oh, that’s an astronomical place!” she said, indifferently. “You know the kind of thing! Telescopes, globes, mathematical instruments—all those sort of objects.”

The Marchese looked surprised,—then incredulous.

“An astronomical place?” he repeated. “Are you sure? Have you seen it?”

“Why, yes, of course!” and she laughed. “Haven’t you?”

“Never! He allows no visitors inside it.”

“Ah, I expect you’re too inquisitive!” and she looked at him with a bland and compassionate tolerance. “You see, being a woman, I don’t care about difficult studies, such as astronomy. Women are not supposed to understand the sciences,—they never can grasp anything in the way of mathematics, can they?”

Farnese hesitated.

Chauvet interposed quickly.

“They can,—but to my mind they cease to be women when they do. They become indifferent to the softer emotions——”

“What emotions?” queried Diana, unfurling a little fan and waving it slowly to and fro.

“The emotions of love,—of tenderness,—of passion——”

“Ah, yes! You mean the emotions of love, of tenderness, of passion—for what? For man? Well, of course!—the most surface knowledge of mathematics would soon put an end to that sort of thing!”

“Dear English madame, you are pleased to be severe!” said Chauvet. “Yet the soft emotions are surely ‘woman’s distinguishing charm’?”

She laughed.

“Men like to say so,” she replied. “Because it flatters their vanity to rouse these ‘soft emotions’ and translate them into love for themselves. But have you had any experience, Professor? If any woman had displayed ‘soft emotions’ towards you, would you not have been disposed to nip them in the bud?”

“Most likely! I am not an object for sentimental consideration,—I never was. I should have greatly regretted it if one of your charming sex had wasted her time or herself on me.”

Just then Madame Dimitrius spoke.

“Dear Miss May, will you play us something?”

She readily acquiesced, and seating herself at the grand piano, which was open, soon scored a triumph. Her playing was exquisitely finished, and as her fingers glided over the keys, the consciousness that she was discoursing music to at least one or two persons who understood and appreciated it gave her increased tenderness of touch and beauty of tone. The dreary feeling of utter hopelessness which had pervaded her, body and soul, when playing to her father and mother, “Ma” asleep on the sofa, and “Pa” hidden behind a newspaper, neither of them knowing or caring what composer’s work she performed, was changed to a warm, happy sense of the power to give pleasure, and the ability to succeed—and when she had finished a delicately wild little sonata of Grieg’s, pressing its soft, half-sobbing final chord as daintily and hushfully as she would have folded a child’s hands in sleep, a murmur of real rapture and surprised admiration came from all her hearers.

“But you are an artiste!” exclaimed the Baroness Rousillon. “You are a professional virtuoso, surely?”

“Spare me such an accusation!” laughed Diana. “I don’t think I could play to an audience for money,—it would seem like selling my soul.”

“Ah, there I can’t follow you,” said Chauvet. “That’s much too high-flown and romantic for me. Why not sell anything if you can find buyers?”

His little eyes glittered ferret-like between his secretive eyelids, and Diana smiled, seeing that he spoke ironically.

“This is an age of selling,” he went on. “The devil might buy souls by the bushel if he wanted them!—(and if there were such a person!) And as for music!—why, it’s as good for sale and barter nowadays as a leg of mutton! The professional musician is as eager for gain as any other merchant in the general market,—and if the spirit of Sappho sang him a song from the Elysian fields, he’d sell it to a gramophone agency for the highest bid. And you talk about ‘selling your soul!’ dear Madame, with a thousand pardons for my brusquerie, you talk nonsense! How do you know you have a soul to sell?”

Before she could reply, Dimitrius interposed,—his face was shadowed by a stern gravity.

“No jesting with that subject, Professor!” he said. “You know my opinions. Sacred things are not suited for ordinary talk,—the issues are too grave,—the realities too absolute.”

Chauvet coughed a little cough of embarrassment, and took out a pair of spectacles from his pocket, polished them and put them back again for want of something else to do. The Marchese Farnese looked up,—his expression was eager and watchful—he was on the alert. But nothing came of his expectancy.

“Play to us again, Miss May,” continued Dimitrius in gentler accents. “You need be under no doubt as to the existence of your soul when you can express it so harmoniously.”

She coloured with pleasure, and turning again to the piano played the “Prélude” of Rachmaninoff with a verve and passion which surprised herself. She could not indeed explain why she, so lately conscious of little save the fact that she was a solitary spinster “in the way” of her would-be juvenile father, and with no one to care what became of her, now felt herself worthy of attention as a woman of talent and individuality, capable of asserting herself as such wherever she might be. The magnificent chords of the Russian composer’s despairing protest against all insignificance and meanness, rolled out from under her skilled finger-tips with all the pleading of a last appeal,—and everyone in the room, even Dimitrius himself, sat, as it were, spellbound and touched by a certain awe. An irresistible outburst of applause greeted her as she carried the brilliant finale to its close, and she rose, trembling a little with the nervous and very novel excitement of finding her musical gifts appreciated. Professor Chauvet got up slowly from his chair and came towards her.

“After that, you may lead me where you like!” he said. “I am tame and humble! I shall never disagree with a woman who can so express the pulsations of a poet’s brain,—for that is what Rachmaninoff has put in his music. Yes, chère Anglaise!—I never flatter—and you play superbly. May I call you chère Anglaise?”

“If it pleases you to do so!” she answered, smiling.

“It does please me—it pleases me very much”—he went on—“it is a sobriquet of originality and distinction. An Englishwoman of real talent is precious—therefore rare. And being rare, it follows that she is dear—even to me! Chère Anglaise, you are charming!—and if both you and I were younger I should risk a proposal!”

Everyone laughed,—no one more so than Diana.

“You must have had considerable training to be such a proficient on the piano?” inquired Farnese, with his look of almost aggressive curiosity.

“Indeed no!” she replied at once. “But I have had a good deal of time to myself one way and the other, and as I love music, I have always practised steadily.”

“We must really have an ‘afternoon’ in Geneva,” said the Baroness Rousillon then. “You must be heard, my dear Miss May! The Genevese are very intelligent—they ought to know what an acquisition they have to their musical society——”

“Oh, no!” interrupted Diana, anxiously—“Please! I could not play before many people——”

“No,—like everything which emanates from Spirit, music of the finest quality is for the few,” said Dimitrius. “‘Where two or three are gathered together there am I in the midst of them’—is the utterance of all god-like Presences. Only two or three can ever understand.”

Diana thanked him mutely by a look, and conversation now became general. In a very short time the little party broke up, and Dimitrius accompanied his guests in turn to the door. The Rousillons took Farnese with them in their automobile,—Professor Chauvet, putting on a most unbecoming and very shabby great-coat, went on his way walking—he lived but half-a-mile or so further up the road.

“In a small cottage, or châlet,”—he explained—“A bachelor’s hermitage where I shall be happy to see you, Miss May, if you ever care to come. I have nothing to show you but books, minerals and a few jewels—which perhaps you might like to look at. Strange jewels!—with histories and qualities and characteristics—is it not so, Dimitrius?”

Dimitrius nodded.

“They have their own mysteries, like everything else,” he said.

Diana murmured her thanks for the invitation and bade him good-night,—then, as he went out of the room with his host, she turned to Madame Dimitrius and with a gentle, almost affectionate consideration, asked if she could do anything for her before going to bed.

“No, my dear!” answered the old lady, taking her hand and patting it caressingly. “It’s kind of you to think about me—and if I want you I’ll ask you to come and help an old woman to be more useful than she is! But wait a few minutes—I know Féodor wishes to speak to you.”

“I have not displeased him, I hope, in any way?” Diana said, a little anxiously. “I felt so ‘at home,’ as it were, that I’m afraid I spoke a little too frankly as a stranger——”

“You spoke charmingly!” Madame assured her—“Brightly, and with perfect independence, which we admire. And need I say how much both my son and I appreciated your quickness of perception and tact?”

She laid a slight emphasis on the last word. Diana smiled and understood.

“People are very inquisitive,” went on Madame. “And it is better to let them think you are a friend and guest of ours than the person for whom my son has been advertising. That advertisement of his caused a great deal of comment and curiosity,—and now that he has said he has withdrawn it and that he does not expect to be suited, the gossip will gradually die down. But if any idea had got about that you were the result of his search for an assistant, you would find yourself in an embarrassing position. You would be asked no end of questions, and our charming Baroness Rousillon would be one of the first to make mischief—but thanks to your admirable self-control she is silenced.”

“Will anything silence her?” and Dimitrius, entering, stood for a moment looking at his mother and Diana with a smile. “I doubt it! But Miss May is not at all the kind of woman the Baroness would take as suitable for a scientific doctor’s assistant,—fortunately. She is not old enough.”

“Not old enough?” and Diana laughed. “Why, what age ought I to be?”

“Sixty at least!” and he laughed with her. “The Baroness is a great deal older than you are, but she still subjugates the fancy of some men. Her idea of a doctor’s private secretary or assistant is a kind of Macbeth’s witch, too severely schooled in the virtues of ugliness to wear rose-coloured chiffon!”

Diana flushed a little as he gave a meaning glance at her graceful draperies,—then he added:

“Come out for a moment in the loggia,—moonlight is often talked about and written about, but it seldom gives such an impression of itself as on an early autumn night in Switzerland. Come!”

She obeyed,—and as she followed him to the marble loggia where the fountains were still playing, an irresistible soft cry of rapture broke from her lips. The scene she looked upon was one of fairy-like enchantment,—the moonlight, pearly pure, was spread in long broad wings of white radiance over the lawns in front of the Château, and reaching out through the shadows of trees, touched into silver the misty, scarcely discernible peaks of snow-mountains far beyond. A deep silence reigned everywhere—that strange silence so frequently felt in the vicinity of mountains,—so that when the bell of the chiming clock set in the turret of the Château struck eleven, its sound was almost startling.

“This would be a night for a sail on the lake,” said Dimitrius. “Some evening you must come.”

She made no reply. Her soul was in her eyes—looking, looking wistfully at the beauty of the night, while all the old, unsatisfied hunger ached at her heart—the hunger for life at its best and brightest—for the things which were worth having and holding,—and absorbed in a sudden wave of thought she hardly remembered for the moment where she was.

“Millions of people look at this moon to-night without seeing it,” said Dimitrius, after a pause, during which he had watched her attentively. “Millions of people live in the world without knowing anything about it. They,—themselves,—are to them, the universe. Like insects, they grub for food and bodily satisfaction,—like insects, they die without having ever known any higher aim of existence. Yet, looking on such loveliness as this to-night, do you not feel that something more lasting, more real than the usual mode of life was and is intended for us? Does it not seem a flaw in the Creator’s plan that this creation should be invested with such beauty and perfection for human beings who do not even see it? Do we make the utmost of our capabilities?”

She turned her eyes away from the moonlit landscape and looked at him with rather a sad smile.

“I cannot tell—I do not know,” she answered. “I am not skilled in argument. But what almost seems to me to be the hardest thing in life is, that we have so little time to learn or to understand. As children and as very young people we are too brimful of animal spirits to think about anything,—then, when we arrive at ‘mature years’ we find we are ‘shelved’ by our fellow-men and women as old and unwanted. Women especially are sneered at for age, as if it were a crime to live beyond one’s teens.”

“Only the coarsest minds and tongues sneer at a woman’s age,” said Dimitrius. “They are the pigs of the common stye, and they must grunt. I see you have suffered from their grunting! That, of course, is because you have not put on the matrimonial yoke. You might get as old as the good Abraham’s wife, Sara, without a sneer, so long as you had become legitimately aged through waiting on the moods and caprices of a husband!” He laughed, half ironically,—then drawing nearer to her by a step, went on in a lower tone:

“What would you say if you could win back youth?—not only the youth of your best days, but a youth transfigured to a fairness and beauty far exceeding any that you have ever known? What would you give, if with that youth you could secure an increased mental capacity for enjoying it?—an exquisite vitality?—a delight in life so keen that every beat of your heart should be one of health and joy?—and that you should hold life itself”—here he paused, and repeated the words slowly—“that you should hold life itself, I say, in a ceaseless series of vibrations as eternal as the making and re-making of universes?”

His dark eyes were fixed upon her face with an intensity of meaning, and a thrill ran through her, half of fear, half of wonderment.

“What would I say?—what would I give? You talk like another Mephistopheles to a female Faustus!” she said, forcing a laugh. “I would not give my soul, because I believe I have a soul, and that it is what God commands me to keep,—but I would give everything else!”

“Your soul is part of your life,” said Dimitrius. “And you could not give that without giving your life as well. I speak of holding your life,—that is to say, keeping it. Understand me well! The soul is the eternal and indestructible pivot round which the mechanism of the brain revolves, as the earth revolves round the sun. The soul imparts all light, all heat, all creation and fruition to the brain, though it is but a speck of radiant energy, invisible to the human eye, even through the most powerful lens. It is the immortal embryo of endless existences, and in whatsoever way it instructs the brain, the brain should be in tune to respond. That the brain seldom responds truly, is the fault of the preponderating animalism of the human race. If you can follow me, still listen!”

She listened indeed,—every sense alert and braced with interest.

“All ideas, all sentiments, all virtues, all sins, are in the cells of the brain,” he went on. “The soul plays on these cells with vibrating touches of light, just as you play on the notes of the piano, or as a typist fingers the keyboard of the machine. On the quality or characteristic of the soul depends the result. Youth is in the cells of the brain. Should the cells become dry and withered, it is because the soul has ceased to charge them with its energy. But when this is the case, it is possible—I say it is possible!—for science to step in. The spark can be re-energised,—the cells can be re-charged.”

Diana caught her breath. Was he mad?—or sane with a sanity that realises a miracle? She gazed at him as though plunging her eyes into a well of mystery.

He smiled strangely. “Poor lady of mature years!” he said. “You have heard me, have you not? Well, think upon what I have said! I am not mad, be assured!—I am temperate in reason and cool in blood. I am only a scientist, bent on defying that Angel at the gate of Eden with the flaming sword who ‘keeps the way of the Tree of Life,’ lest men should take and eat and live for ever! It would not do for men in the aggregate to live for ever, for most of them are little more than mites in a cheese,—but as the Prophet Esdras was told: ‘This present world is made for the many, but the world to come for the few.’ That ‘world to come’ does not mean a world after death—but the world of here and now—a world ‘for the few’ who know how to use it, and themselves!—a world where the same moonlight as this shines like a robe of woven pearl spread over all human ugliness and ignorance, leaving only God’s beauty and wisdom! Look at it once more!—make a picture of it in your mind!—and then—good-night!”

She raised her eyes to the dense purple of the sky, and let them wander over the lovely gardens, drenched in silver glory—then extended her hand.

“Thank you for all you have told me,” she said. “I shall remember it. Good-night!”

CHAPTER XI

The next day Diana entered upon her work,—and for a fortnight following she was kept fully employed. But nothing mysterious, nothing alarming or confusing to the mind was presented for her contemplation or co-operation. Not once was she called upon to enter the laboratory where the strange wheel whirled at the bidding of the influence of light, going faster or slower, according to the ascension or declension of the sun; and not once did Dimitrius refer to the subject of his discourse with her on that first moonlight night of her arrival. Her knowledge of Latin and Greek stood her in good stead, for she was set to translate some musty rolls of vellum, on which were inscribed certain abstruse scientific propositions of a thousand years old,—problems propounded by the Assyrians, and afterwards copied by the Latins, who for the most part, had left out some of the original phraseology, thereby losing valuable hints and suggestions, which Dimitrius was studying to discover and replace. Diana was a careful, clever, and devotedly conscientious worker; nothing escaped her, and she shirked no pains to unravel the difficulties, which to less interested students, might have seemed insuperable. Much as she desired to know more of Dimitrius himself and his own special line of research, she held her peace and asked no questions, merely taking his instructions and faithfully doing exactly as she was told. She worked in the great library where he had at first received her, and where the curious steel instrument she had noticed on entering, swung to and fro continuously, striking off a pin’s point of fire as it moved. Sometimes in the pauses of her close examination of the faded and difficult Latin script on which all her energies were bent, she would lift her eyes and look at this strange object as though it were a living companion in the room, and would almost mentally ask it to disclose its meaning; and one morning, impelled by a sudden fancy, she put her watch open on the table, and measured the interval between one spark of fire and the next. She at once found that the dots of flame were struck off with precision at every second. They were, in fact, seconds of time.

“So that, if one had leisure to watch the thing,” she mused, “one would know that when sixty fire-flashes have flown into air, one minute has passed. And I wonder what becomes of these glittering particles?”

She knew well enough that they did not perish, but were only absorbed into another elemental organism. She had observed, too, that the movement of the whole machine, delicately balanced on its crystal pedestal, was sharp and emphatic when the sun was at the meridian, and more subdued though not less precise in the afternoon. She had very little opportunity, however, to continue a long watching of this inexplicable and apparently meaningless contrivance after midday, as then her hours of work were considered over and she was free to do as she liked. Sometimes she remained in her own apartments, practising her music, or reading,—and more often than not she went for a drive out into the open country with Madame Dimitrius with the light victoria and pair, which was a gift from Dimitrius to his mother, who could not be persuaded to drive in a motor-car. It was a charming turn-out, recognised in the neighbourhood as “the Doctor’s carriage”—for though Geneva and its environs are well supplied with many professors of medicine and surgery, Dimitrius seemed at this period to have gained a reputation apart from the rest as “the” doctor, par excellence. Once Diana asked him whether he had a large practice? He laughed.

“None at all!” he replied. “I tell everybody that I have retired from the profession in order to devote all my time to scientific research—and this is true. But it does not stop people from sending for me at a critical moment when all other efforts to save a life have failed. And then of course I do my best.”

“And are you always successful?” she went on.

“Not always. How can I be? If I am sent for to rescue a man who has overfed and over-drunken himself from his youth onwards, and who, as a natural consequence, has not a single organ in his body free from disease, all my skill is of no avail—I cannot hinder him from toppling into the unconsciousness of the next embryo, where, it is to be hoped, he will lose his diseases with his fleshy particles. I can save a child’s life generally—and the lives of girls and women who have not been touched by man. The life-principle is very strong in these,—it has not been tampered with.”

He closed the conversation abruptly, and she perceived that he had no inclination to talk of his own healing power or ability.

After about a month or six weeks at the Château Fragonard, Diana began to feel very happy,—happier than she had ever been in her life. Though she sometimes thought of her parents, she knew perfectly that they were not people to grieve long about any calamity,—besides which, her “death” was not a calamity so far as they were concerned. They would call it such, for convention’s sake and in deference to social and civil observances—but “Ma” would console herself with a paid “companion-housekeeper”—and if that companion-housekeeper chanced to be in the least good-looking or youthful, “Pa” would blossom out into such a juvenility of white and “fancy” waistcoats and general conduct as frequently distinguishes elderly gentlemen who are loth to lose their reputation for gallantry. And Diana wasted no time in what would have been foolish regret, had she felt it, for her complete and fortunate severance from “home” which was only home to her because her duty made her consider it so. A great affection had sprung up between her and Madame Dimitrius; the handsome old lady was a most lovable personality, simple, pious, unaffected, and full of a devotion for her son which was as touching as it was warm and deep. She had absolute confidence in him, and never worried him by any inquisitiveness concerning the labours which kept him nearly all day away from her, shut up in his laboratory, which he alone had the secret of opening or closing. Hers was the absolute reliance of “the perfect love which casteth out fear;” all that he did was right and must be right in her eyes,—and when she saw how whole-heartedly and eagerly Diana threw herself into the tedious and difficult work he had put before her to do, she showed towards that hitherto lonely and unloved woman a tenderness and consideration to which for years she had been unaccustomed. Very naturally Diana responded to this kindness with impulsive warmth and gratitude, and took pleasure in performing little services, such as a daughter might do, for the sweet-natured and gentle lady whose friendship and sympathy she appreciated more and more each day. She loved to help her in little household duties,—to mend an occasional tiny hole in the fine old lace which Madame generally wore with her rich black silk gowns,—to see that her arm-chair and foot-stool were placed just as she liked them to be,—to wind the wool for her knitting, and to make her laugh with some quaint or witty story. Diana was an admirable raconteuse, and she had a wonderful memory,—moreover, her impressions of persons and things were tinged with the gaiety of a perceptive humour. Sometimes Dimitrius himself, returning from a walk or from a drive in his small open auto-car, would find the two sitting together by a cheerful log fire in the drawing-room, laughing and chatting like two children, Diana busy with her embroidery, her small, well-shaped, white hands moving swiftly and gracefully among the fine wools from which she worked her “Jacobean” designs, and his mother knitting comforts for the poor in preparation for the winter which was beginning to make itself felt in keen airs and gusts of snow. On one of these occasions he stood for some minutes on the threshold, looking at them as they sat, their backs turned towards him, so that they were not at once aware of his presence. Diana’s head, crowned with its bright twists of hair, was for the moment the chief object of his close attention,—he noted its compact shape, and the line of the nape of the neck which carried it—a singularly strong and perfect line, if judged by classic methods. It denoted health and power, with something of pride,—and he studied it anatomically and physiologically with all the interest of a scholar. Suddenly she turned, and seeing him apparently waiting at the door, smiled a greeting.

“Do you want me?” she asked.

He advanced into the room.

“Ought I to want you?” he counter-queried. “These are not working hours! If you were a British workman such an idea as my wanting you ‘out of time’ would never enter your head! As a British working woman, you should stipulate for the same privileges as a British working man.”

He drew a chair to the fire, and as his mother looked at him with loving, welcoming eyes, he took her hand and kissed it.

“Winter is at hand,” he continued, giving a stir with the poker to the blazing logs in the grate. “It is cold to-day—with the cold of the glaciers, and I hear that the snow blocks all the mountain passes. We are at the end of October—we must expect some bitter weather. But in Switzerland the cold is dry and bracing—it strengthens the nerves and muscles and improves the health. How do you stand a severe winter, Miss May?”

“I have never thought about it,” she answered. “All seasons have beauty for me, and I have never suffered very much by either the cold or the heat. I think I have been more interested in other things.”

He looked at her intently.

“What other things?”

She hesitated. A faint colour stole over her cheeks.

“Well,—I hardly know how to express it—things of life and death. I have always been rather a suppressed sort of creature—with all my aims and wishes pent up,—pressed into a bottle, as it were, and corked tight!” She laughed, and went on. “Perhaps if the cork were drawn there might be an explosion! But, wrongly or rightly, I have judged myself as an atom of significance made insignificant by circumstances and environment, and I have longed to make my ‘significance,’ however small, distinct and clear, even though it were only a pin’s point of meaning. If I said this to ordinary people, they would probably exclaim ‘How dull!’ and laugh at me for such an idea——”

“Of course!—dull people would laugh,” agreed Dimitrius. “People in the aggregate laugh at most things, except lack of money. That makes them cry—if not outwardly, then inwardly. But I do not laugh,—for if you can forget heat and cold and rough weather in the dream of seeking to discover your own significance and meaning in a universe where truly nothing exists without its set place and purpose, you are a woman of originality as well as intelligence. But that much of you I have already discovered.”

She glanced at him brightly.

“You are very kind!”

“Now do you mean that seriously or ironically?” he queried, with a slight smile. “I am not really ‘very kind’—I consider myself very cruel to have kept you chained for more than a month to rolls of vellum inscribed with crabbed old Latin characters, illegible enough to bewilder the strongest eyes. But you have done exceedingly well,—and we have all three had time to know each other and to like each other, so that a harmony between us is established. Yes—you have done more than exceedingly well——”

“I am glad you are pleased,” said Diana, simply, resting one hand on her embroidery frame and looking at him with somewhat tired, anxious eyes. “I was rather hoping to see you this evening, though it is, as you say, after working hours, for I wanted very much to tell you that the manuscript I am now deciphering seems to call for your own particular attention. I should prefer your reading it with me before I go further.”

“You are very conscientious,” he said, fixing his eyes keenly upon her—“Is she not, mother mine? She is afraid she will learn something important and necessary to my work before I have a chance to study it for myself. Loyal Miss Diana!”

Madame Dimitrius glanced wistfully from her son to Diana, and from Diana back to her son again.

“Yes, she is loyal, Féodor! You have found a treasure in her,” she said—“I am sure of it. It seems a providence that she came to us.”

“Is it not Shakespeare who says, ‘There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow’?” he queried lightly. “How much more ‘special’ then is the coming of a Diana!”

It was the first time he had used her Christian name without any ceremonious prefix in her presence, and she was conscious of a thrill of pleasure, for which she instantly reproached herself. “I have no business to care what or how he calls me,” she thought. “He’s my employer,—nothing more.”

“Diana,” repeated Dimitrius, watching her narrowly from under his now half-shut eyelids. “Diana is a name fraught with beautiful associations—the divine huntress—the goddess of the moon! Diana, the fleet of foot—the lady of the silver bow! What poets’ dreams, what delicate illusions, what lovely legends are clustered round the name!”

She looked at him, half amused, half indifferent.

“Yes,—it is a thousand pities I was ever given such a name,” she said. “If I were a Martha, a Deborah or a Sarah, it would suit me much better. But Diana! It suggests a beautiful young woman——”

“You were young once!” he suggested, meaningly.

“Ah, yes, once!” and she sighed. “Once is a long time ago!”

“I never regret youth,” said Madame Dimitrius. “My age has been much happier and more peaceful. I would not go back to my young days.”

“That is because you have fulfilled your particular destiny,” interposed her son,—“You fell in love with my father—what happy times they must have been when the first glamour of attraction drew you both to one another!—you married him,—and I am the result! Dearest mother, there was nothing more for you to do, with your devoted and gentle nature! You became the wife of a clever man,—he died, having fulfilled his destiny in giving you—may I say so?—a clever son,—myself! What more can any woman ask of ordinary nature?”

He laughed gaily, and putting his arm round his mother, fondled her as if she were a child.

“Yes, beloved!—you have done all your duty!” he went on. “But you have sacrificed your own identity—the thing that Miss Diana calls her ‘significance.’ You lost that willingly when you married—all women lose it when they marry:—and you have never quite found it again. But you will find it! The slow process of evolution will make of you a ‘fine spirit’ when the husk of material life is cast off for wider expansion.”

As he spoke, Diana looked at mother and son with the odd sense of being an outside spectator of two entirely unconnected identities,—the one overpowering and shadowing the other, but wholly unrelated and more or less opposed in temperament. Madame Dimitrius was distinguished by an air of soft and placid dignity, made sympathetic by a delicate touch of lassitude indicative of age and a desire for repose, while Féodor Dimitrius himself gave the impression of a strong energy restrained and held within bounds as a spirited charger is reined and held in by his rider, and, above all, of a man aware of his own possibilities and full of set resolve to fulfil them.

“Is that embroidery of a very pressing nature?” he suddenly said, then, with a smile. “Or do you think you could spare a few moments away from it?”

She at once put aside her frame and rose.

“Did I not ask you when you came in if you wanted me?” she queried. “Somehow I was quite sure you did! You know I am always ready to serve you if I can.”

He still had one arm round his mother,—but he raised his eyes and fixed them on Diana with an expression which was to her new and strange.

“I know you are!” he said, slowly. “And I shall need your service in a difficulty—very soon! But not just now. I have only a few things to say which I think should not be put off till to-morrow. We’ll go into the library and talk there.”

He bent down and kissed his mother’s snowy and still luxuriant hair, adding for her benefit:

“We shall not be long, dearest of women! Keep warm and cosy by the fire, and you will not care for the ‘significance’ of yourself so long as you are loved! That is all some women ask for,—love.”

“Is it not enough?” said Diana, conscious of her own “asking” in that direction.

“Enough? No!—not half or quarter enough! Not for some women or some men—they demand more than this (and they have a right to demand more) out of the infinite riches of the Universe, Love,—or what is generally accepted under that name, is a mere temporary physical attraction between two persons of opposite sex, which lessens with time as it is bound to lessen because of the higher claims made on the soul,—a painful thing to realise!—but we must not shiver away from truth like a child shivering away from its first dip in the sea, or be afraid of it. Lovers forget lovers, friends forget friends, husbands forget wives and vice versa,—the closest ties are constantly severed——”

“You are wrong, Féodor—we do not forget!” said Madame Dimitrius, with tender reproach in her accents. “I do not forget your father—he is dear to me as lover and husband still. And whether God shall please to send my soul to heaven or to hell, I could never forget my love for you!”

“Beloved, I know!—I feel all you say—but you are an exception to the majority—and we will not talk personalities! I cannot”—here he laughed and kissed her hand again—“I cannot have my theories upset by a petite Maman!”

He left the room then and Diana followed him. Once in the library he shut the door and locked it.

“Now you spoke of something in your translations that seemed to call for my attention,” he said. “I am ready to hear what it is.”

Diana went to the table desk where she habitually worked, and took up some pages of manuscript, neatly fastened together in readable form.

“It is a curious subject,” she said. “In the Assyrian originals it seems to have been called ‘The problem of the Fourth, Sixth and Seventh, culminating in the Eighth.’ Whether the Latin rendering truly follows the ancient script, it is, of course, impossible to say,—but while deciphering the Latin, I came to the conclusion that the Fourth, Sixth and Seventh were named in the problem as ‘rays’ or ‘tones’ of light, and the proposed culmination of the Eighth——”

“Stop!” exclaimed Dimitrius, in a strained, eager voice. “Give me your papers!—let me see!”

She handed them to him at once, and he sat down to read. While he was thus occupied, her gaze constantly wandered to the small, scythe-like instrument mowing off the seconds in dots of flame as a mower sweeps off the heads of daisies in the grass. A curious crimson colour seemed to be diffused round the whole piece of mechanism,—an effect she had never noticed before, and then she remembered it was late in the afternoon and that the sun had set. The rosy light emanating from the instrument and deeply reflected in the crystal pedestal on which it was balanced, seemed like an after-glow from the sky,—but the actual grey twilight outside was too pronounced and cold to admit of such an explanation.

Suddenly Dimitrius looked up.

“You are right!” he said. “This ancient problem demands my closest study. And yet it is no problem at all, but only an exposition of my inmost thought!” He paused,—then: “Come here, Diana May!” he continued—“I may as well begin with you. Come and sit close beside me.”

She obeyed. With his eyes fixed upon her face, he went on:

“You, as a woman of superior intelligence, have never supposed, I am sure, that I have secured your services merely to decipher and copy out old Latin script? No!—I see by your look that you have fully realised that such is not all the actual need I have of you. I have waited to find out, by a study of your character and temperament, when and how I could state plainly my demands. I think I need not wait much longer. Now this ancient treatise on ‘Problems,’ obscure and involved in wording as it is, helps me to the conviction that I am on the right track of discovery. It treats of Light. ‘The problem of the Fourth, Sixth and Seventh,’ with its ‘ultimate culmination of the Eighth’ is the clue. In that ‘ultimate culmination’ is the Great Secret!”

His eyes flashed,—his features were transfigured by an inward fervour.

“Have the patience to follow me but a little,” he continued. “You have sense and ability and you can decipher a meaning from an apparent chaos of words. Consider, then, that within the limitations of this rolling ball, the earth, we are permitted to recognise seven tones of music and seven tones of colour. The existing numbers of the creative sum, so far as we can count them, are Seven and Five, which added together make Twelve, itself a ‘creative’ number. Man recognises in himself Five Senses, Touch, Taste, Sight, Hearing, Smell—but as a matter of fact he has Seven, for he should include Intuition and Instinct, which are more important than all the others as the means of communicating with his surroundings. Now ‘the culmination of the Eighth’ is neither Five nor Seven nor Twelve,—it is the close or rebound of the Octave—the end of the leading Seven—the point where a fresh Seven begins. It is enough for humanity to have arrived at this for the present—for we have not yet sounded the heights or depths of even the first Seven radiations which we all agree to recognise. We admit seven tones of music, and seven tones of colour, but what of our seven rays of light? We have the ‘violet ray,’ the ‘X ray’—and a newly discovered ray showing the working bodily organism of man,—but there are Seven Rays piercing the density of ether, which are intended for the use and benefit of the human being, and which are closely connected with his personality, his needs and his life. Seven Rays!—and it is for us to prove and test them all!—which is the very problem you have brought to my notice in this old Latin document: ‘the Fourth, Sixth and Seventh, culminating in the Eighth.’”

He put the papers carefully together on the table beside him, and turned to Diana.

“You have understood me?”

She bent her head.

“Perfectly!”

“You recall the incidents of the first day of your arrival here?—your brief visit to my laboratory, and what you saw there?”

She smiled.

“Do you think I could ever forget?”

“Well!—that being so I do not see why I should wait,” he said, musingly, and speaking more to himself than to her. “There is no reason why I should not begin at once the task which is bound to be long and difficult! My ‘subject’ is at my disposal—I am free to operate!”

He rose and went to an iron-bound cabinet which he unlocked and took from thence a small phial containing what appeared to be a glittering globule like an unset jewel, which moved restlessly to and fro in its glass prison. He held it up before her eyes.

“Suppose I ask you to swallow this?” he said.

For all answer, she stretched out her hand to take the phial. He laughed.

“Upon my word, you are either very brave or very reckless!” he exclaimed—“I hardly know what to think of you! But you shall not be deceived. This is a single drop of the liquid you saw in process of distillation within its locked-up cell,—it has a potent, ay, a terrific force and may cause you to swoon. On the other hand it may have quite the contrary effect. It should re-vivify—it may disintegrate,—but I cannot guarantee its action. I know its composition, but, mark you!—I have never tested it on any human creature. I cannot try it on myself—for if it robbed me of my capacity to work, I have no one to carry on my researches,—and I would not try it on my mother,—she is too old, and her life is too precious to me——”

“Well, my life is precious to nobody,” said Diana, calmly. “Not even to myself. Shall I take your ‘little dram’ now?”

Dimitrius looked at her in amazement that was almost admiration.

“If you would rather wait a few days, or even weeks longer, do so,” he answered. “I will not persuade you to any act of this kind in a hurry. For it is only the first test of many to come.”

“And if I survive the first I shall be good for the last,” said Diana, merrily. “So come, Doctor Féodor!—give me the mysterious ‘drop’ of liquid fire!”

Her face was bright with animation and courage—but his grew pale and haggard with sudden fear. As he still hesitated, she sprang up and took the phial from his hand.

“Diana! Let me hold you!” he cried, in real agitation—and he caught her firmly round the waist—“Believe me—there is danger!——But—if you will——”

“One, two, three, and away!” said she, and taking the tiny glass stopper from the phial she swallowed its contents.

“One, two, three, and away!” it was, indeed!—for she felt herself whirled off into a strange, dark, slippery vortex of murderous cold—which suddenly changed to blazing heat—then again to cold,—she saw giant pinnacles of ice, and enormous clouds of flame rolling upon her as from a burning sky—then, she seemed to be flying along over black chasms and striving to escape from a whirlwind which enveloped her as though she were a leaf in a storm,—till at last no thought, no personal consciousness remained to her, and, giving up all resistance, she allowed herself to fall,—down, down ever so far!—when, all at once a vital freshness and elasticity possessed her as though she had been suddenly endowed with wings, and she came to herself standing upright as before, with Dimitrius holding her in the strong grasp of one arm.

“Well!” she said, aware that she trembled violently, but otherwise not afraid: “It wasn’t bad! Not much taste about it!”

She saw that he was deadly pale—his eyes were misty with something like tears in them.

“You brave woman!” he said, in a low tone—“You daring soul!—But—are you sure you are all right?—Can you stand alone?”

She drew away from his hold.

“Of course! Firm as a rock!”

He looked at her wonderingly,—almost with a kind of terror.

“Thank God!” he murmured—“thank God I have not killed you! If I had——!”

He dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

Still trembling a little as she was, she felt deeply touched by his evident emotion, and with that sudden, new and surprising sense of lightness and buoyancy upon her she ran to him and impulsively knelt down beside him.

“Don’t think of it, please!” she said, entreatingly, her always sweet voice striking a soothing note on the air—“Don’t worry! All is well! I’m as alive as I can be. If you had killed me I quite understand you would have been very sorry,—but it really wouldn’t have mattered—in the interests of science! The only trouble for you would have been to get rid of my body,—bodies are always such a nuisance! But with all your knowledge I daresay you could have ground me into a little heap of dust!” And she laughed, quite merrily. “Please don’t sit in such an attitude of despair!—you’re not half cold-hearted enough for a scientist!”

He raised his head and looked at her.

“That’s true!” he said, and smiled. “But—I wonder what has made you the strange woman you are? No fear of the unknown!—No hesitation, even when death might be the result of your daring,—surely there never was one of your sex like you!”