as in those days, I think, that I began to worship you. But I
never called my worship love. I wanted to be Me, Myself, and somehow I
felt that when I was once promised to you I should have no separate
identity. It was the rebellion of a strong personality against a
stronger one. I was not wise enough to see that you who protected
others from the storms of life might want some little haven of your
own--a haven which would be--Home.

"But because you failed to be masterful in the one way which would
have won me, because you said, always, 'Will you?' instead of,
'Come--let there be no more of this between you and me, Diana,' I went
away, not understanding you, not understanding myself.

"And over there with Sophie, I met Van Rosen. As I look back upon it,
I do not wonder that he charmed me. He was different from our American
men, a lover of pleasure. He typified the spirit of joy to me--there
was never a moment when he had not some vivid plan for me. We did
things of which I had always dreamed.

"He gave a house party for me in his ancestral castle on the Rhine.
And he proposed to me in an ancient chapel with the moonlight making
the effigies of his old ancestors seem like living knights in golden
armor.

"It was all so picturesque that practical America--that you, oh, I
must confess it, Anthony,--seemed miles away. It seemed to me that in
my own country we lived dreary lives in a workaday atmosphere. It was
only in that castle on the Rhine that there were people who knew how
to play. So I became engaged, and through all those months, Van Rosen
and I played together.

"But I grew so tired of it, so deadly tired of it! Life seemed to have
no meaning. And after a time I grew a little afraid. Van Rosen was
different. I can't define exactly where the difference lay. But
between us was the barrier of centuries of opposing traditions. I
began to feel that as his wife I should be a Princess in name, but a
slave in fact. Always laughing, always seeming to dance in the
sunshine, he had a hardness which nothing could soften. I saw him now
and then with those whom he considered his inferiors. I saw his
treatment of his servants, his horses, his dogs. I heard him speak
once to an old and dependent aunt, at another time to a young
governess--and my cheeks burned--and I was afraid.

"It came back to me then how you had always treated those who were
weaker