y beating when there had not
been a thought to set it in motion. She traced it once to the words,
'next year,' incidentally mentioned. 'Free,' was a word that checked her
throbs, as at a question of life or death. Her solitude, excepting the
hours of sleep, if then, was a time of irregular breathing. The something
unnamed, running beside her, became a dreadful familiar; the race between
them past contemplation for ghastliness. 'But this is your Law!' she
cried to the world, while blinding her eyes against a peep of the
shrouded features.

Singularly, she had but to abandon hope, and the shadowy figure vanished,
the tragic race was ended. How to live and think, and not to hope: the
slave of passion had this problem before her.

Other tasks were supportable, though one seemed hard at moments and was
not passive; it attacked her. The men and women of her circle derisively,
unanimously, disbelieved in an innocence that forfeited reputation. Women
were complimentarily assumed to be not such gaping idiots. And as the
weeks advanced, a change came over Percy. The gentleman had grown
restless at covert congratulations, hollow to his knowledge, however much
caressing vanity, and therefore secretly a wound to it. One day, after
sitting silent, he bluntly proposed to break 'this foolish trifling';
just in his old manner, though not so honourably; not very definitely
either. Her hand was taken.

'I feared that dumbness!' Diana said, letting her hand go, but keeping
her composure. 'My friend Percy, I am not a lion-tamer, and if you are of
those animals, we break the chapter. Plainly you think that where there
appears to be a choice of fools, the woman is distinctly designed for the
person. Drop my hand, or I shall repeat the fable of the Goose with the
Golden Eggs.'

'Fables are applicable only in the school-room,' said he; and he ventured
on 'Tony!'

'I vowed an oath to my dear Emma--as good as to the heavens! and that of
itself would stay me from being insane again.' She released herself.
'Signor Percy, you teach me to suspect you of having an idle wish to
pluck your plaything to pieces:--to boast of it? Ah! my friend, I fancied
I was of more value to you. You must come less often; even to not at all,
if you are one of those idols with feet of clay which leave the print of
their steps in a room; or fall and crush the silly idolizer.'

'But surely you know . . .' said he. 'We can't have to wait long.' He
looked full of hopef