-to my post."

"I hope she will make you happy, Evan," Diana said gently and cordially.

"You are very good, I am sure. I don't want you to think, Diana, that
I--that I, in fact, have forgotten anything"--

"You cannot forget too soon," she answered, smiling, "everything that
Clara would not wish you to remember."

"A fellow is so awfully lonely out there on the frontiers"--he said,
mumbling his words through his moustache in a peculiar way.

"You will not be lonely now, I hope."

"You see, Di, you were lost to me. If I could only think of you as
happy"--

"You may."

"Happy?" he repeated, looking at her. He had avoided her eyes until now.

"Yes."

"Then _you_ have forgotten?"

"One does not forget," said Diana, with again a grave smile. "But I
have ceased to look back sorrowfully."

"But--you are married"--

Then light flushed into Diana's face. She understood Evan's allusion.

"Yes," she said,--"to somebody who has my whole heart."

"But--you are married to Mr. Masters?"--he went on incredulously.

"Certainly. And I love my husband with all the strength there is in me
to love. I hope your wife will love you as well," she added with
another smile, a different one, which was exceedingly aggravating to
the young man. No other lips could wreathe so with such a mingling of
softness and strength, love, and--yes, happiness. Captain Knowlton had
seen smiles like that upon those lips once, long ago; never a brighter
or more confident one. He felt unaccountably injured.

"You did not speak so when I saw you last," he remarked.

"No. I was a fool," said Diana, with somewhat unreasonable
perverseness. "Or, if I was not a fool, I was weak."

"I see you are strong now," said the young officer bitterly. "I was
never strong; and I am weak still. I have not forgotten, Diana."

"You ought to forget, Evan," she said gently.

"It's impossible!" said he, hastily turning over photographs on the
table.

Diana would have answered, but the opportunity was gone. Other people
came near; the two fell apart from each other, and no more words were
interchanged between them.

It grieved but did not astonish Basil to perceive, when he joined Diana
in their own room that night, that she had been weeping; and it only
grieved him to know that the weeping was renewed in the night. He gave
no sign that he knew it, and Diana thought he was asleep through it
all. Tears were by no means a favourite indulgence with her; this nigh