“How dare you?” he exclaimed.  “Unsay that—­take it back?  Do you hear?”

She shrank a little, twisting in his grasp, but he held her remorselessly.

“No, I won’t take it back. . . .  Ah!  Let me go, Max, you’re hurting me!”

He released her instantly, and, as his hands fell away from her shoulders, the white flesh reddened into bars where his fingers had gripped her.  His eyes rested for a moment on the angry-looking marks, and then, with an inarticulate cry, he caught her to him, pressing his lips against the bruised flesh, against her eyes, her mouth, crushing her in his arms.

She lay there passively; but her body stiffened a little, and her lips remained quite still and unresponsive beneath his.

“Diana! . . .  Beloved! . . .”

She thrust her hands against his chest.

“Let me go,” she whispered breathlessly, “Let me go.  I can’t bear you to touch me.”

With a quick, determined movement she freed herself, and stood a little away from him, panting.

“Don’t ever . . . do that . . . again.  I—­I can’t bear you to touch me . . . not now.”

She made a wavering step towards the door.  He held it open for her, and in silence she passed out and up the stairs.  Presently, from the landing above, he heard the lock of her bedroom door click into its socket. . . .

CHAPTER XX

THE SHADOW FALLS

Breakfast, the following morning, was something of an ordeal.  Neither Max nor Diana spoke to each other if speech could be avoided, and, when this was impossible, they addressed each other with a frigid politeness that was more painful than the silence.

Jerry and Joan, sensing the antagonism in the atmosphere, endeavoured to make conversation, but their efforts received scant encouragement, and both were thankful when the meal came to an end, and they were free to seek refuge in another room, leaving husband and wife alone together.

Diana glanced a trifle nervously at her husband as the door closed behind them.  There was a coldness, an aloofness about him, that reminded her vividly of the early days of their acquaintanceship, when his cool indifference of manner had set a barrier between them which her impulsive girlhood had been powerless to break through.

“Will you spare me a few minutes in my study?” he said.  His face was perfectly impassive; only the peculiar brilliancy of his eyes spoke of the white-hot anger he was holding in leash.

Diana nodded silently.  For a moment, bereft of words, she quailed before the knowledge of that concentrated anger, but by the time they had reached his study she had pulled herself together, and was ready to face him with a high temper almost equal to his own.

She had had the night for reflection, and the sense of bitter injustice under which she was labouring had roused in her the same dogged, unbending obstinacy which, in a much smaller way, had evinced itself when Baroni had thrown the music at her and had subsequently bade her pick it up.