“Let me have a few moments of this,” he muttered, a little breathlessly.  “A few moments of thinking you have come back to me.”

“But I have come back to you!” Her eyes grew wide and startled with a sudden, desperate apprehension.  “You won’t send me away again—­not now?”

His face twisted with pain.

“Beloved, I must!  God knows how hard it will be—­but there is no other way.”

“No other way?” She broke from his arms, searching his face with her frightened eyes.  “What do you mean? . . . What do you mean?  Don’t you—­care—­any longer?”

He smiled, as a man may who is asked whether the sun will rise to-morrow.

“Not that, beloved.  Never that.  I’ve always cared, and I shall go on caring through this world and into the next—­even though, after to-night, we may never be together again.”

“Never—­together again?” She clung to him.  “Oh, why do you say such things?  I can’t—­I can’t live without you now.  Max, I’m sorry—­sorry!  I’ve been punished enough—­don’t punish me any more by sending me away from you.”

“Punish you!  Heart’s dearest, there has never been any thought of punishment in my mind.  Heaven knows, I’ve reproached myself bitterly enough for all the misery I’ve brought on you.”

“Then why—­why do you talk of sending me away?”

“I’m not going to send you away.  It is I who have to go.  Oh, beloved!  I ought never to have come here this evening.  But I thought if I might see you—­just once again—­before I went out into the night, I should at least have that to remember. . . .  And then you sang, and it seemed as though you were calling me. . . .”

“Yes,” she said very softly.  “I called you.  I wanted you so.”  Then, after a moment, with sudden, womanish curiosity:  “How did you know I was singing here to-night?”

“Olga told me.  She’s bitterly opposed to all that I’ve been doing, but”—­smiling faintly—­“she has occasional spasms of compassion, when she remembers that, after all, I’m a poor devil who’s being thrust out of paradise.”

“She loves you,” Diana answered simply.  “I think she has loved you—­better—­than I did, Max.  But not more!” she added jealously.  “No one could love you more, dear.”

After a pause, she asked: 

“I suppose Olga told you that I know—­everything?”

“Yes.  I’m glad you know”—­quietly.  “It makes it easier for me to tell you why I must go away—­out of your life.”

She leaned nearer to him, her hands on his shoulders.

“Don’t go!” she whispered.  “Ah, don’t go!”

“I must,” he said hoarsely.  “Listen, beloved, and then you will see that there is no other way. . . .  I married you, believing that when Nadine would be safely settled on the throne, I should be free to live my own life, free to come back to England—­and you.  If I had not believed that, I shouldn’t have told you that I cared; I should have gone away and never seen you again.  But now—­now I know that I shall never be free, never able to live in England.”