Almost Baroni’s very words!  Max winced.

“No.  I don’t know how it will end, as you say.  But surely there will come a time when I shall be free to live my own life?”

Adrienne smiled a trifle wistfully.

“If your conscience ever lets you,” she said.

There was a long silence.  Presently she resumed:—–­

“I never thought, when you first told me about your engagement, that the position of affairs need make any difference.  I was so pleased to think that you cared for each other!  And now—­where will it all end?  How many lives are going to be darkened by the same shadow?  Oh, it’s terrible, Max, terrible!”

The tears filled her eyes.

“Don’t!” said Max unsteadily.  “Don’t!  I know it’s bad enough.  Perhaps you’re right—­I oughtn’t to have spoken to Diana, I hoped things would right themselves eventually, but you and Baroni have put another complexion upon matters.  It’s all an inextricable tangle, whichever way one looks at it—­come good luck or bad! . . .  I suppose I was wrong—­I ought to have waited.  But now . . . now . . .  Before God, Adrienne!  I can’t, give her up—­not now!”

CHAPTER XVII

“WHOM GOD HATH JOINED TOGETHER”

Max and Diana were married shortly before the following Christmas.  The wedding took place very quietly at Crailing, only a few intimate friends being asked to it.  For, as Max pointed out, either their invitations must be limited to a dozen or so, or else Diana must resign herself to a fashionable wedding in town, with all the world and his wife as guests at the subsequent reception.  No middle course is possible when a well-known dramatist elects to marry the latest sensation in the musical world!

So it was in the tiny grey church overlooking the sea that Max and Diana were made one, with the distant murmur of the waves in their ears, and with Alan Stair to speak the solemn words that joined their lives together, and when the little intimate luncheon which followed the ceremony was over, they drove away in Max’s car to the wild, beautiful coast of Cornwall, there to spend the first perfect days of their married life.

And they were perfect days!  Afterwards, when clouds had dimmed the radiance of the sun, and doubts and ugly questionings were beating up on every side, Diana had always that radiant fortnight by the Cornish sea—­she and Max alone together—­to look back upon.

The woman whose married life holds sorrow, and who has no such golden memory stored away, is bereft indeed!

On their return to London, the Erringtons established themselves at Lilac Lodge, a charming old-fashioned house in Hampstead, where the creeper-clad walls and great bushes of lilac reminded Diana pleasantly of the old Rectory at Crailing.  Jerry made one of the household—­“resident secretary” as he proudly termed himself, and his cheery, good-humoured presence was invaluable whenever difficulties arose.