There was a long silence.  At last Diana spoke in low, shaken tones, her head bowed.

“I can’t!” she whispered.  “I shall never forgive myself.  And I can’t ask Max to—­forgive me. . . .  He couldn’t.”  The last words were hardly audible.

For a moment Olga stood quite still, gazing with hard eyes at the slight figure hunched into drooping lines of utter weariness.  Once her lips moved, but no sound came.  Then she turned away, walking with lagging footsteps, and a minute later the door opened and closed quietly again behind her.

CHAPTER XXVII

CARLO BARONI EXPLAINS

Diana sat on, very still, very silent, staring straight in front of her with wide, tearless eyes.  Only now and again a long, shuddering sigh escaped her, like the caught breath of a child that has cried till it is utterly exhausted and can cry no more.

She felt that she had come to an end of things.  Nothing could undo the past, and ahead of her stretched the future, empty and void of promise.

Presently the creak of the door reopening roused her, and she turned, instantly on the defensive, anticipating that Olga had come back to renew the struggle.  But it was only Baroni, who approached her with a look of infinite concern on his kind old face.

“My child!” he began.  “My child! . . .  So, then!  You know all that there is to know.”

Diana looked up wearily.

“Yes,” she replied.  “I know it all.”

The old maestro’s eyes softened as they rested upon her, and when he spoke again, his queer husky voice was toned to a note of extraordinary sweetness.

“My dear pupil, if it had been possible, I would haf spared you this knowledge.  It was wrong of Olga to tell you—­above all”—­his face creasing with anxiety as the ruling passion asserted itself irrepressibly—­“to tell you on a day when you haf to sing!”

“I made her,” answered Diana listlessly.  She passed her hand wearily across her forehead.  “Don’t worry, Maestro, I shall be able to sing to-night.”

“Tiens!  But you are all to pieces, my child!  You will drink a glass of champagne—­now, at once,” he insisted, adding persuasively as she shook her head, “To please me, is it not so?”

Diana’s lips curved in a tired smile.

“Is champagne the cure for a heartache, then, Maestro?”

Baroni’s eyes grew suddenly sad.

“Ah, my dear, only death—­or a great love—­can heal the wound that lies in the heart,” he answered gently.  He paused, then resumed crisply:  “But, meanwhile, we haf to live—­and prima donnas haf to sing.  So . . . the little glass of wine in my room, is it not?”

He tucked her arm within his, patting her hand paternally, and led her into his own sanctum, where he settled her comfortably in a big easy-chair beside the fire, and poured her out a glass of wine, watching her sip it with a glow of satisfaction in his eyes.