plication for the post of gardener is refused, I see," he said.
"And quite rightly, too. It was great presumption on my part. After
all"--with bitter mockery--"what are a handful of nettles in the garden
of a _prima donna_? They'll soon be stifled beneath the wreaths of
laurel and bouquets that the world will throw you. You'll never even
feel their sting."

"You are wrong," said Diana, very low, "quite wrong. They _have_ stung
me. Mr. Errington"--and as she turned to him he saw that her eyes were
brimming with tears--"why can't we be friends? You--you have helped me
so many times that I don't understand why you treat me now . . . almost
as though I were an enemy?"

"An enemy? . . . You!"

"Yes," she said steadily.

He was silent.

"I don't wish to be," she went on, an odd wistfulness in her voice.
"Can't we--be friends?"

Errington pushed his plate aside abruptly.

"You don't know what you're offering me," he said, in hurrying tones.
"If I could only take it! . . . But I've no right to make friends--no
right. I think I've been singled out by fate to live alone."

"Yet you are friends with Miss de Gervais," she said quickly.

"I write plays for her," he replied evasively. "So that we are obliged
to see a good deal of each other."

"And apparently you don't want to be friends with me."

"There can be little in common between a mere quill-driver and--a
_prima donna_."

She turned on him swiftly.

"You seem to forget that at present you are a famous dramatist, while I
am merely a musical student."

"You divested yourself of that title for ever this evening," he
returned, "It was no 'student' who sang 'The Haven of Memory.'"

"All the same I shall have to study for a long time yet, Baroni tells
me,"--smiling a little.

"In that sense a great artiste is always a student. But what I meant
by saying that a mere writer has no place in a prima donna's life was
that, whereas my work is more or less a hobby, and my little bit of
'fame'--as you choose to call it--merely a side-issue, _your_ work will
be your whole existence. You will live for it entirely--your art and
the world's recognition of it will absorb every thought. There will be
no room in your life for the friendship of insignificant people like
myself."

"Try me," she said demurely.

He swung round on her with a sudden fierceness.

"By God!" he exclaimed. "If you knew the temptation . . . if you knew
how I long to take what you off