always want you, I think," he said simply.

"Well, you seem to have a faculty for always turning up when _I_ want
_you_," she replied. "I was just thinking how often you had appeared
in the very nick of time. Seriously"--her voice took on a graver
note--"I feel I can't ever repay you.--you've come to my help so often."

"There is a way," he said, very low, and then fell silent.

"Tell me," she urged him, smilingly. "I like to pay my debts."

He made no answer, and Diana, suddenly nervous and puzzled, continued a
little breathlessly:--

"Have I--have I offended you? I--I thought"--her lips quivered--"we
had agreed to be friends."

Max was silent a moment. Then he said slowly:--

"I can't keep that compact."

Diana's heart contracted with a sudden fear.

"Can't keep it?" she repeated dully. She could not picture her
life--no--robbed of this friendship!

"No." His hands hung clenched at his sides, and he stood staring at
her from beneath bent brows, his mouth set in a straight line. It was
as though he were holding himself under a rigid restraint, against
which something within him battled, striving for release.

All at once his control snapped.

"I love you! . . . God in heaven! Haven't you guessed it?"

The words broke from him like a bitter cry--the cry of a heart torn in
twain by love and thwarted longing. Diana felt the urgency of its
demand thrill through her whole being.

"Max . . ."

It was the merest whisper, reaching his ears like the touch of a
butterfly's wing--hesitantly shy, and honey-sweet with the promise of
summer.

The next instant his arms were round her and he was holding her as
though he would never let her go, passionately kissing the soft mouth,
so close beneath his own. He lifted her off her feet, crushing her to
him, and Diana, the woman in her definitely, vividly aroused at last,
clung to him yielding, but half-terrified by the tempest of emotion she
had waked.

"My beloved! . . . _My soul_!"

His voice was vehement with the love and passion at length unleashed
from bondage; his kisses hurt her. There was something torrential,
overwhelming, in his imperious wooing. He held her with the fierce,
possessive grip of primitive man claiming the chosen woman as his mate.

She struggled faintly against him.

"Ah! Max--Max . . . . Let me go. You're frightening me."

She heard him draw his breath hard, and then slowly, reluctantly, as
though by a sheer effort of