he whispered. "I shall never forgive myself. And I can't
ask Max to--forgive me. . . . He couldn't." The last words were hardly
audible.

For a moment Olga stood quite still, gazing with hard eyes at the slight
figure hunched into drooping lines of utter weariness. Once her lips
moved, but no sound came. Then she turned away, walking with lagging
footsteps, and a minute later the door opened and closed quietly again
behind her.

CHAPTER XXVII

CARLO BARONI EXPLAINS

Diana sat on, very still, very silent, staring straight in front of her
with wide, tearless eyes. Only now and again a long, shuddering sigh
escaped her, like the caught breath of a child that has cried till it
is utterly exhausted and can cry no more.

She felt that she had come to an end of things. Nothing could undo the
past, and ahead of her stretched the future, empty and void of promise.

Presently the creak of the door reopening roused her, and she turned,
instantly on the defensive, anticipating that Olga had come back to
renew the struggle. But it was only Baroni, who approached her with a
look of infinite concern on his kind old face.

"My child!" he began. "My child! . . . So, then! You know all that
there is to know."

Diana looked up wearily.

"Yes," she replied. "I know it all."

The old _maestro's_ eyes softened as they rested upon her, and when he
spoke again, his queer husky voice was toned to a note of extraordinary
sweetness.

"My dear pupil, if it had been possible, I would haf spared you this
knowledge. It was wrong of Olga to tell you--above all"--his face
creasing with anxiety as the ruling passion asserted itself
irrepressibly--"to tell you on a day when you haf to sing!"

"I made her," answered Diana listlessly. She passed her hand wearily
across her forehead. "Don't worry, _Maestro_, I shall be able to sing
to-night."

"_Tiens_! But you are all to pieces, my child! You will drink a glass
of champagne--now, at once," he insisted, adding persuasively as she
shook her head, "To please me, is it not so?"

Diana's lips curved in a tired smile.

"Is champagne the cure for a heartache, then, _Maestro_?"

Baroni's eyes grew suddenly sad.

"Ah, my dear, only death--or a great love--can heal the wound that lies
in the heart," he answered gently. He paused, then resumed crisply:
"But, meanwhile, we haf to live--and _prima donnas_ haf to sing.
So . . . the little glass of wine in my room, is it no