“You can bring that old French fellow here whenever you like,” he said, holding her.  Then, faintly, his eyes closed:  “This is New Year’s Day.”

Once more Diana’s kisses fell “on the tired heart like rain”; and when she left him he lay still, wrapped in a tangle of thought which his weakness could not unravel.  Presently he dropped again into sleep.

Diana too slept, the sleep of a young exhaustion; and when she woke up, it was to find her being flooded with an upholding, enkindling joy, she knew not how or whence.  She threw open the window to the frosty dawn, thinking of the year before and her first arrival at Beechcote.  And there, in the eastern sky—­no radiant planet—­but a twinkling star, in an ethereal blue; and from the valley below, dim joyous sounds of bells.