But now that sense of wild rebellion against injustice, against personal injury, was magnified a thousandfold.  For months she had been drifting steadily apart from her husband, acutely conscious of that secret thing in his life, and fiercely resentful of its imperceptible, yet binding influence on all his actions.  Again and again she had been perplexed and mystified by certain incomprehensible things which she had observed—­for instance, the fact that, as she knew, part of Max’s correspondence was conducted in cipher; that at times he seemed quite unaccountably worried and depressed; and, above all, that he was for ever at the beck and call of Adrienne de Gervais.

Gradually she had begun to connect the two things—­Adrienne, and that secret which dwelt like a shadowy menace at the back of everything.  It was clear, too, that they were also linked together in the minds both of Baroni and Olga Lermontof—­a dropped sentence here, a hint there, had assured her of that.

Then had come Olga’s definite suggestion, “Adrienne de Gervais is a bad friend for the man one loves!” And from that point onward Diana had seen new meanings in all that passed between her husband and the actress, and a blind jealousy had taken possession of her.  Something out of the past bound her husband and Adrienne together, of that she felt convinced.  She believed that the knowledge which Max had chosen to withhold from her—­his wife—­he shared with Adrienne—­and all Diana’s fierce young sense of possession rose up in opposition.

Last night, the sight of her husband and the actress, standing together on the stage, had seemed to her to epitomise their relative positions—­Max and Adrienne, working together, fully in each other’s confidence, whilst she herself was the outsider, only the onlooker in the box!

“Well?” she said, defiantly turning to her husband.  “Well?  What is it you wish to say to me?”

“I want an explanation of your conduct—­last night.”

“And I,” she retorted impetuously, “I want an explanation of your conduct—­ever since we’ve been married!”

He swept her demand aside as though it were the irresponsible prattle of a child, ignored it utterly.  He was conscious of only one thing—­that she had barred herself away from him, humiliated him, dealt their mutual love a blow beneath which it reeled.

The bolted door itself counted for nothing.  What mattered was that it was she who had closed it, deliberately choosing to shut him outside her life, and cutting every cord of love and trust and belief that bound them together.