gentleness was like soothing balm in
contrast to Sara's sharpness.

After dinner Diana sang. She sat at the piano, which was placed just
within the door of the unlighted music room, and her guests grouped
themselves on the porch outside.

She gave them, first, a little German serenade, then a gay bit of Paris
music-hall frivolity, and finally her fingers strayed into the
accompaniment of a song which she had written for Anthony. It was called
"The Wind From the Sea," and it had a haunting refrain.

[Illustration: Music score]

Diana's thrilling voice rose and fell with the beating cadences. She had
sung the song for Anthony on the night before she sailed for Berlin, and
when she had finished he had made once more his insistent plea, and she
had said, "Wait."

Bettina, next to Anthony, in a corner of the porch, had had a rapturous
moment when he had murmured, "How lovely you are to-night," and had laid
his hand over hers in the darkness.

But as Diana sang, her joy was suddenly shadowed. Why was Diana singing
things that seemed to drag the heart out of one, and why had Anthony
taken his hand away, and why was he so still?

Even as she questioned the search-light from the little ferry that plied
between the Head and the Neck sent a shaft of blinding radiance across
the harbor. Bettina caught a glimpse of her lover's face, and of the
longing look in his eyes as they rested on Diana.

Why did Anthony look at Diana like that?

As the insistent question obsessed her, Bettina was conscious of no
feeling of jealousy. Her faith in Anthony made impossible any thought
that his heart was not wholly hers. She merely coveted the look in his
eyes as they rested on another woman.

"Of course it's just the way she sings," she told herself, restlessly.
"Why, it almost makes me cry."

The music ceased abruptly, and Diana sat very still in the darkness.

It was Sophie's voice which broke the silence.

"Betty, dear, haven't you a song for us?"

"No," came the response from the far corner. "Dad sang. I can only
dance."

"Really?" Justin was on his feet at once. "If you'll dance, we will
light all the candles in the music room."

Bettina came forward. "It's an interpretive dance. Can you play the
'Spring Song,' Diana?"

Sophie, observing anxiously, wondered what further test would try her
friend. But she saw no sign of an emotion which had to do with a night
when Diana had waited in the moonlight for the lover who belong