the slightest movement she sat on and waited; and that was
exceedingly characteristic of Diana. Where another girl would have
felt embarrassed and made some sound to relieve the tension, she
almost held her breath to retain it. The situation was unique. In a
life that offered deplorably little of novelty and adventure she would
not for worlds have thrown away such a chance. Meryl, on the other
hand, would probably not have felt the tension; she would have quietly
walked past him out at the entrance. Diana felt the atmosphere of the
footlights and calmly waited.

And, of course, in the end, vaguely conscious of some disturbing, not
quite accountable element, Carew looked up straight into her eyes.

Diana looked straight back and tried hard to keep her lips from
twitching. She noticed pleasurably that he did not start; that he
scarcely even showed surprise. Such a man, she felt, would not. Yet
the very fact that for several seconds he remained perfectly still,
staring at her, showed that he was quite satisfactorily astounded.
Then he stood up, and waited a moment as if he expected her to speak.
She thought he might have smiled. The hero on the stage, of course,
would smile--divinely--and a blush like a tender dawn would overspread
the heroine's rose-leaf cheeks.

But he did not smile; to be honest, he looked excessively annoyed, and
no tender blush of any sort could possibly have shown upon her
sunburnt face.

Still, she did not intend to flinch, and if the mischievous smile
lurking at the corners of her mouth died away, she still regarded him
with a calmness equal to his own, and with the impishness quite
emphatically still in her eyes. Then suddenly she felt as if there had
been some invisible sword-play between them. Her instinct told her he
resented her silent watching, and that his cool, collected front now
and his silence were the expression of his resentment. It was not in
the least like a fairy story, of course; here was the prince, surly,
stony, and bearish, and the princess, red and brown with sunburn, on
the point of being caught at a disadvantage. But there Diana's native
wits came to her aid, and she did a clever thing.

"Would you mind helping me down?" she asked, sweetly. "I climbed up
here to get a good view of the interior, and when I try to descend the
stones slip so, I am nervous. I did not like to disturb you before,"
she finished, unabashed and unblushing, but carefully lowering her
eyes a momen