“I can believe that, and still be willing to trust myself to yours,” he answered, gravely.  “I know you, and honor you as men rarely do the women they marry, until the proof of the years has tried them.  In your case the trial has come first.  I’ve watched you bear it—­watched you more closely than you’ve ever been aware of.  I’ve stood by, and seen you carry your burden, when it was harder than you imagine not to take my part in it.  I’ve looked on, and seen you suffer, when it was all I could do to keep from saying some word of sympathy you might have resented.  But, Diane,” he cried, his voice taking on a strange, peremptory sharpness, “I can’t do it any longer!  My power of standing still, while you go on with your single-handed fight, is at an end.  If ever God sent a man to a woman’s aid, He has sent me to yours; and you must let me do what I’m appointed for.  You must come to me for comfort in your loneliness.  You must come to me for care in your necessity.  I have both care and comfort for you here; and you must come.”

Without moving toward her he stood with open arms.

“Come!” he cried again, commandingly.

The tears coursed down her cheeks, but she gave no sign of obeying him, except to drag one hand from the protecting bookcase ledge, to which she seemed to cling.

“Come, Diane!” he repeated!  “Come to me!”

The other hand fell to her side, while she gazed at him piteously, as though in reluctant submission to his will.

“Come!” he said once more, in a tone of authority mingled with appeal.

Drawn by a force she had no power to withstand, she took one slow, hesitating step toward him.

“I haven’t yielded,” she stammered.  “I haven’t consented.  I can’t consent—­yet.”

“No, dearest, no,” he murmured, with arms yearning to her as she approached him; “nevertheless—­come!”

X

Notwithstanding the fact that she had wept in his arms—­wept as women weep who are brave in the hour of trial, only to break down in the moment of relief—­Diane would give Derek Pruyn no other answer.  She could not consent—­yet.  With this reply he was obliged to sail away, getting what comfort he might from its implications.

During the three months of his absence Diane took knowledge of herself, appraising her strength and probing her weakness.  She was too honest not to own that there were desires in her nature which leaped into newness of life at the thought that there might again be means to support them.  Diane de la Ferronaise was not dead, but sleeping.  Her love of luxury and pleasure—­her joy in jewels, equipage, and dress—­her woman’s elemental weaknesses, second only to the instinct for maternity—­all these, grown lethargic from hunger, were ready to awake again at the mere possibility of food.  She was forced to confront the fact that, with the same opportunities, she had it in her to go back to the same life.  It was a humiliating fact, but it stared her in the face, that experience had shown her a creature for a man to be afraid of.  Derek Pruyn had seen her subdued by circumstances, as the panther is subdued by famine; but it was not yet proved that the savage, preying thing was tamed.