e powerful, innocent-eyed
man.

"You must be joking," he began. Then he saw the trouble in her eyes
and her quivering mouth.

"But even in jest, never say that, while I am in the world," he added
gently. She was so grateful for the chivalrous words that she dared
not speak for fear the tears should rush out of her eyes. Impulsively
she put out her hand, and his brown, firm one closed on it, and held it
very close. Then he carried it to his lips. She heard him say one
word, very softly: "Diana."

At that she tore her hand from his and sped away swiftly into the
darkness. Once in her cabin she locked the door, turned out the
lights, and flung herself on to the bed. For a long time she lay
there, a rumpled heap of tulle and misery, weeping because life was a
cruel brute who kept her gifts for the rich and wellborn or the old and
indifferent, mockingly withholding from those who were young and eager
and could better appreciate them.

"What is the use of youth and good looks when one is poor and lonely?"
she sobbed. "They only mock one! It is like having a Paris hat put on
your head while your feet are bare and bleeding and your stomach is
empty."

She wished she had never begun this miserable game of Diana Vernilands,
never tasted the power of rank and place, the joy of jewels and pretty
clothes. She wished she had never left England, never seen Vereker
Sarle, and, above all, she wished she were dead.

It was about two in the morning before she had finished wishing and
sobbing. Youth began to assert itself then, and she thought of what a
sight would be in the morning, with tangled hair and swollen eyes.
Languidly at last she rose. The tulle dress was ruined, but little she
recked. Rather she felt a fierce satisfaction in the thought that it
was done for, and Diana could never wear it.

That wretched Diana! . . .

But when her flushed face was bathed and her hair brushed out she
thought more kindly of Diana, remembering that she, too, was in
trouble. Well, tomorrow there would have to be a great clean-up of all
these miserable pretences and deceits; tonight, at least, she would try
and sleep. Her hand was on the switch to turn out the lights when
there came a knocking at the door. It was such a strange, peremptory
knocking--such a careless outraging of the small hours, that for a
moment she stood rooted with astonishment and apprehension, staring at
herself in the mirror that composed the back of t