the great _prima donna_ catch her
breath and falter in her song. For an instant it had seemed almost as
though she might break down. Then the tension passed, and the lovely
voice, upborne by a limitless technique, had floated out again, golden
and perfect as before.

It was only the habit of surpassing art which had enabled Diana to
finish her song. Since last night, when she had seen Max for that
brief moment at the Embassy, she had passed through the whole gamut of
emotion, glimpsed the vision of coming happiness, only to believe that
with her own hands she had pushed it aside. And now she was conscious
of nothing but that Max--Max, the man she loved--was here, close to her
once again, and that her heart was crying out for him. He was hers,
her mate out of the whole world, and in a sudden blinding flash of
self-revelation, she recognised in her refusal to return to him a sheer
denial of the divine altruism of love.

The blank, bewildering chaos of the last twelve hours, with its turmoil
of conflicting passions, took on a new aspect, and all at once that
which had been dark was become light.

From the moment she had learned the truth about her husband, her
thoughts had centred solely round herself, dwelling--in, all humility,
it is true--but still dwelling none the less egotistically upon her
personal failure, her own irreparable mistake, her self-wrought
bankruptcy of all the faith and absolute belief a woman loves to give
her lover. She had thrust these things before his happiness, whereas
the stern and simple creed of love places the loved one first and
everything else immeasurably second.

But now, in this quickened moment of revelation, Diana knew that she
loved Max utterly and entirely, that his happiness was her supreme
need, and that if she let him go from her again, life would be
henceforth a poor, maimed thing, shorn of all meaning.

It no longer mattered that she had sinned against him, that she had
nothing to bring, that she must go to him a beggar. The scales had
fallen from her eyes, and she realised that in love there is no
reckoning--no pitiful making-up of accounts. The pride that cannot
take has no place there; where love is, giving and taking are one and
indivisible.

Nothing mattered any longer--nothing except that Max was here--here,
within reach of the great love in her heart that was stretching out its
arms to him . . . calling him back.

The audience, ardently applauding her fi