discover that the break had simplified several problems and
made it much easier for her to meet her husband and begin life again on
fresh terms. Max, indeed, seemed to have accepted the new _regime_ with
that same mocking philosophy with which he invariably faced the problems
of life--and which so successfully cloaked his hurt from prying eyes.

He was uniformly kind in his manner to his wife--with that light,
half-cynical kindness which he had accorded her in the train on their
first memorable journey together, and which effectually set them as far
apart from each other as though they stood at the opposite ends of the
earth.

Unreasonably enough, Diana bitterly resented this attitude. Womanlike,
she made more than one attempt to re-open the matter over which they had
quarrelled, but each was skilfully turned aside, and the fact that after
his one rejected effort at reconciliation, Max had calmly accepted the
new order of things, added fuel to the jealous fire that burned within
her. She told herself that if he still cared for her, if he were not
utterly absorbed in Adrienne de Gervais, he would never have rested until
he had restored the old, happy relations between them.

Instinctively she sought to dull the pain at her heart by plunging
headlong into professional life. Her voice, thanks to the rest and
change of her visit to Switzerland, had regained all its former beauty,
and her return to the concert platform was received with an outburst of
popular enthusiasm. The newspapers devoted half a column apiece to the
subject, and several of them prophesied that it was in grand opera that
Madame Diana Quentin would eventually find the setting best suited to her
gifts.

"Mere concert work"--wrote one critic--"will never give her the scope
which both her temperament and her marvellous voice demand."

And with this opinion Baroni cordially concurred. It was his ultimate
ambition for Diana that she should study for grand opera, and she
herself, only too thankful to find something that would occupy her
thoughts and take her right out of herself, as it were, enabling her to
forget the overthrow of her happiness, flung herself into the work with
enthusiasm.

Gradually, as time passed on, her bitter feelings towards Max softened a
little. That light, half-ironical manner he had assumed brought back to
her so vividly the Max Errington of the early days of their acquaintance
that it recalled, too, a measure of the odd