position to
receive him at the door. She had known him to give way occasionally to
bursts of anger, in which a word from herself had soothed him. Leaving
her place in the corner, she was hurrying to the hall, when again
Dorothea's voice arrested her.

"Aren't you going in to see Diane?"

"No."

From where she stood, just within the door, Diane knew that he had flung
the word over his shoulder as he went up the hail toward the stairway.
He was going to his room without speaking to her. For an instant she
stood still from consternation, but it was in emergencies like this that
her spirit rose. Without further hesitation she passed out into the
hall, just as Derek Pruyn turned at the bend in the staircase, on his
way upward. For a brief second, as, standing below, she lifted her eyes
to his in questioning, their glances met; but, on his part, it was
without recognition.

XI

Half an hour after Derek's return Diane was summoned into his presence
in the little room where she had arranged his letters in the afternoon.
The door was standing open, and she went in slowly, her head high. She
was dressed as when she had parted from him; and the whiteness of her
neck and shoulders, free from jewels, collar, or chain, was the more
brilliant from contrast with the severe line of black. In her pale face
all expression was focussed into the pained inquiry of her eyes.

She entered so silently that he did not hear her, or lift his head from
the hand on which it leaned wearily, as he rested his elbow on the desk.
Pausing in the middle of the room, she had time to notice that he had
opened a few of the letters lying before him, but had thrust them
impatiently from him, evidently unread. The cablegram she had laid where
his glance would immediately fall upon it was between his fingers, but
the envelope was unbroken. His attitude was so much that of a man tired
and dispirited that her heart went out to him.

It was perhaps the involuntary sigh that broke from her lips that caused
him to look up. When he did so his eyes fixed themselves on her with a
dazed stare, as though he wondered whence and for what she had come. In
the eager attention with which she regarded him she noted subconsciously
that he was unshaven and ill-kempt, and that his eyes, as Dorothea had
said, were bloodshot.

He dragged himself to his feet, and with forced courtesy asked her to
sit down. She allowed herself to sink mechanically to the edge of the