“I shall love all your friends,” she said, with a bright look.  “I’m glad you have so many!”

“Does that mean that you’ve felt rather lonely sometimes?  Poor darling!” he said, tenderly, “it must have been solitary often at Portofino.”

“Oh no—­I had papa.”  Then her truthfulness overcame her.  “I don’t mean to say I didn’t often want friends of my own age—­girl friends especially.”

“You can’t have them now!”—­he said, passionately, as they paused at a wicket-gate, under a yew-tree.  “I want you all—­all—­to myself.”  And in the shadow of the yew he put his arms round her again, and their hearts beat together.

But our nature moves within its own inexorable limits.  In Diana, Marsham’s touch, Marsham’s embrace awakened that strange mingled happiness, that happiness reared and based on tragedy, which the pure and sensitive feel in the crowning moments of life.  Love is tortured by its own intensity; and the thought of death strikes through the experience which means the life of the race.  As her lips felt Marsham’s kiss, she knew, as generations of women have known before her, that life could give her no more; and she also knew that it was transiency and parting that made it so intolerably sweet.

“Till death us do part,” she said to herself.  And in the intensity of her submission to the common lot she saw down the years the end of what had now begun—­herself lying quiet and blessed, in the last sleep, her dead hand in Marsham’s.

* * * * *

“Why must we go home?” he said, discontentedly, as he released her.  “One turn more!—­up the avenue!  There is light enough yet!”

She yielded weakly; pacifying her social conscience by the half-penitent remark that Mrs. Colwood would have said good-bye to her guests, and that—­she—­she supposed they would soon have to know.

“Well, as I want you to marry me in six weeks,” said Marsham, joyously, “I suppose they will.”

“Six weeks!” She gasped.  “Oh, how unreasonable!”

“Dearest!—­A fortnight would do for frocks.  And whom have we to consult but ourselves?  I know you have no near relations.  As for cousins, it doesn’t take long to write them a few notes, and ask them to the wedding.”

Diana sighed.

“My only cousins are the Mertons.  They are all in Barbadoes but Fanny.”

Her tone changed a little.  In her thoughts, she added, hurriedly:  “I sha’n’t have any bridesmaids!”

Marsham, discreetly, made no reply.  Personally, he hoped that Miss Merton’s engagements might take her safely back to Barbadoes before the wedding-day.  But if not, he and his would no doubt know how to deal with her—­civilly and firmly—­as people must learn to deal with their distasteful relations.