I made a
dash for the window, and once outside, standing on the narrow balcony, I
threw the candle-end into the room, aiming for the fire-place. Faint
starlight, sifting through heavy clouds, showed me a row of small
flower-pots standing in a wooden box. Hastily I wrapped the treaty in a
towel which hung over the iron railing, lifted out two of the
flower-pots (in which the plants were dead and dry), laid the flat
parcel I had made in the bottom of the box, and replaced the pots to
cover and conceal it. Then I walked back into the room again. A hand,
fumbling at the handle of the door, pushed it open with a faint creaking
of the hinges. Then the light of a dark lantern flashed.

DIANA FORREST'S PART

CHAPTER XIV

DIANA TAKES A MIDNIGHT DRIVE

Some people apparently understand how to be unhappy gracefully, as if it
were a kind of fine art. I don't. It seems too bad to be true that I
should be unhappy, and as if I must wake up to find that it was only a
bad dream.

I suppose I've been spoiled a good deal all my life. Everybody has been
kind to me, and tried to do things for my pleasure, just as I have for
them; and I have taken things for granted--except, of course, with Lisa.
But Lisa is different--different from everyone else in the world. I have
never expected anything from her, as I have from others. All I've wanted
was to make her as happy as such a poor, little, piteous creature could
be, and to teach myself never to mind anything that she might say or do.

But Ivor--to be disappointed in him, to be made miserable by him! I
didn't know it was possible to suffer as I suffered that day he went off
and left me standing in the railway-station. I didn't dream then of
going to Paris. If anybody had told me I would go, I should have said,
"No, no, I will not." And yet I did. I allowed myself to be persuaded. I
tried to make myself think that it was to please Aunt Lilian; but down
underneath I knew all the time it wasn't that, really. It was because I
couldn't bear to do the things I'm accustomed to doing every day. I felt
as if I should cry, or scream, or do something ridiculous and awful
unless there were a change of some sort--any change, but if possible
some novelty and excitement, with people talking to me every minute.

Perhaps, too, there was an attraction for me in the thought that I would
be in Paris while Ivor was there. I kept reminding myself on the boat
and the train that nothing good coul