doing, that!"

"True, but the fact remains. And those others would pay a fortune for
the information she could give. Besides, I believe she frankly hates
me."

"Possibly. But she would never, I think, allow her personal feelings
to override everything else. After all, she was one of us--is still,
really, though she would gladly disown the connection."

"Well, when you've looked at every side of the matter, we only come
back to the same point. I think you're acting wrongly. You're letting
Diana pledge herself blindly, when you're not free to give her the
confidence a man should give his wife--when you don't even
know--yet--how it may all end."

Almost Baroni's very words! Max winced.

"No. I don't know how it will end, as you say. But surely there
_will_ come a time when I shall be free to live my own life?"

Adrienne smiled a trifle wistfully.

"If your conscience ever lets you," she said.

There was a long silence. Presently she resumed:---

"I never thought, when you first told me about your engagement, that
the position of affairs need make any difference. I was so pleased to
think that you cared for each other! And now--where will it all end?
How many lives are going to be darkened by the same shadow? Oh, it's
terrible, Max, terrible!"

The tears filled her eyes.

"Don't!" said Max unsteadily. "Don't! I know it's bad enough.
Perhaps you're right--I oughtn't to have spoken to Diana, I hoped
things would right themselves eventually, but you and Baroni have put
another complexion upon matters. It's all an inextricable tangle,
whichever way one looks at it--come good luck or bad! . . . I suppose
I was wrong--I ought to have waited. But now . . . now . . . Before
God, Adrienne! I can't, give her up--not now!"

CHAPTER XVII

"WHOM GOD HATH JOINED TOGETHER"

Max and Diana were married shortly before the following Christmas. The
wedding took place very quietly at Crailing, only a few intimate friends
being asked to it. For, as Max pointed out, either their invitations
must be limited to a dozen or so, or else Diana must resign herself to a
fashionable wedding in town, with all the world and his wife as guests at
the subsequent reception. No middle course is possible when a well-known
dramatist elects to marry the latest sensation in the musical world!

So it was in the tiny grey church overlooking the sea that Max and Diana
were made one, with the distant murmur of the waves