he knew that if he were to remain at
Crailing, if they were to continue seeing each other almost daily,
there could be but one end to the matter--her conviction that no
happiness could result from such a marriage would go by the board. It
could not stand against the breathless impetuosity of Max's
love-making--not when her own heart was eager and aching to respond.

"Thank you, Max," she said simply, extending her hand.

He put it aside, drawing her into his embrace.

"Beloved," he said, and now there was no passion, no fierceness of
desire in his voice, only unutterable tenderness. "Beloved, please God
you will find it in your heart to be good to me. All my thoughts are
yours, but for that one thing over which I need your faith. . . . I
think no man ever loved a woman so utterly as I love you. And oh!
little white English rose of my heart, I'd never ask more than you
could give. Love isn't all passion. It's tenderness and shielding and
service, dear, as well as fire and flame. A man loves his wife in all
the little ways of daily life as well as in the big ways of eternity."

He stooped his head, and a shaft of sunlight flickered across his
bright hair. Diana watched it with a curious sense of detachment.
Very gently he laid her hands against his lips, and the next moment he
was swinging away from her across the stretch of yellow sand, leaving
her alone once more with the sea and the sky and the wheeling gulls.

CHAPTER XV

DIANA'S DECISION

Max had been gone a week--a week of distress and miserable indecision
for Diana, racked as she was between her love and her conviction that
marriage under the only circumstances possible would inevitably bring
unhappiness. Over and above this fear there was the instinctive recoil
she felt from Errington's demand for such blind faith. Her pride
rebelled against it. If he loved her and had confidence in her, why
couldn't he trust her with his secret? It was treating her like a
child, and it would be wrong--all wrong--she argued, to begin their
married life with concealment and secrecy for its foundation.

One morning she even wrote to him, telling him definitely either that
he must trust her altogether, or that they must part irrevocably. But
the letter was torn up the same afternoon, and Diana went to bed that
night with her decision still untaken.

For several nights she had slept but little, and once again she passed
long hours tossing feverishly from