ilence she passed out and up the stairs. Presently, from the
landing above, he heard the lock of her bedroom door click into its
socket. . . .

CHAPTER XX

THE SHADOW FALLS

Breakfast, the following morning, was something of an ordeal. Neither
Max nor Diana spoke to each other if speech could be avoided, and, when
this was impossible, they addressed each other with a frigid politeness
that was more painful than the silence.

Jerry and Joan, sensing the antagonism in the atmosphere, endeavoured
to make conversation, but their efforts received scant encouragement,
and both were thankful when the meal came to an end, and they were free
to seek refuge in another room, leaving husband and wife alone together.

Diana glanced a trifle nervously at her husband as the door closed
behind them. There was a coldness, an aloofness about him, that
reminded her vividly of the early days of their acquaintanceship, when
his cool indifference of manner had set a barrier between them which
her impulsive girlhood had been powerless to break through.

"Will you spare me a few minutes in my study?" he said. His face was
perfectly impassive; only the peculiar brilliancy of his eyes spoke of
the white-hot anger he was holding in leash.

Diana nodded silently. For a moment, bereft of words, she quailed
before the knowledge of that concentrated anger, but by the time they
had reached his study she had pulled herself together, and was ready to
face him with a high temper almost equal to his own.

She had had the night for reflection, and the sense of bitter injustice
under which she was labouring had roused in her the same dogged,
unbending obstinacy which, in a much smaller way, had evinced itself
when Baroni had thrown the music at her and had subsequently bade her
pick it up.

But now that sense of wild rebellion against injustice, against
personal injury, was magnified a thousandfold. For months she had been
drifting steadily apart from her husband, acutely conscious of that
secret thing in his life, and fiercely resentful of its imperceptible,
yet binding influence on all his actions. Again and again she had been
perplexed and mystified by certain incomprehensible things which she
had observed--for instance, the fact that, as she knew, part of Max's
correspondence was conducted in cipher; that at times he seemed quite
unaccountably worried and depressed; and, above all, that he was for
ever at the beck and call of Adr