There was only one force that would tame her; but there was that force, and Diane knew that she had submitted to its domination.  From weeks of tortuous self-examination she emerged into this knowledge, as one comes out of a labyrinthine cavern into sunshine.  Even here in the open, however, was a problem still to solve.  Could she marry the man who had never told her that he loved her, even though she herself loved him?  Had she the power to give herself without stint, while asking of him only what he chose to offer her?  Would she, who had made men serve her, with little more than smiles for their reward, be content to serve in her own turn, getting nothing but a half-loaf for her heart’s sustenance?  She asked herself these questions, but put off answering them—­waiting for him to force decision on her.

So the rest of the winter passed, and by the time Derek came back the hyacinths were fading from the gardens and parks, and the tulips were coming into bloom.  To both Diane and Dorothea spring was bringing a new motive for looking forward together with a new comprehension of the human heart’s capacity for joy.

Perhaps no day of their patient waiting was so long in passing as that on which it was announced to them that Derek Pruyn had landed that afternoon.  He had sent word that he could not come home at once, as business required his immediate presence at the office.  Having already exhausted their ingenuity in adorning the house, and putting everything he could possibly want in the place where he could most easily find it, there was nothing to do but to sit through the long hours in an impatience which even Diane found it difficult to disguise.  The visits of the postman were welcomed as affording the additional task of arranging Derek’s letters on the desk in the small, book-lined room specially devoted to his use; and when, in the evening, a cablegram arrived, Diane herself propped it in a conspicuous place, with a tiny silver dagger, for opening the envelope, beside it.  The act, with its suggestion of intimate life, gave her a stealthy pleasure; and when Dorothea glided in and caught her sitting in Derek’s own chair at the desk, she blushed like a school-girl detected in a crime.  It was perhaps this acknowledgment of weakness that enabled Dorothea to speak out, and say what had been for some time on her mind.

“Diane,” she asked, dropping among the cushions of a divan, “are you going to marry father?”

[Illustration:  DRAWN BY FRANK CRAIG DIANE PROPPED THE CABLEGRAM IN A CONSPICUOUS PLACE]

Diane felt the color receding from her face as suddenly as it had come, while she gained time in which to collect her astonished wits by putting the silver dagger down beside the telegram with needless exactitude before attempting a response.

“Do you remember what Sir Walter Scott said, in the days when the authorship of Waverley was still a secret, to the indiscreet people who asked him if he had written it?  ‘No,’ he answered; ’but if I had I should give you the same reply.’”