“No,” she said quietly.  “I don’t see.  Why can’t I come to Ruvania with you?”

A sudden light leaped into his eyes, but it died away almost instantly.  He shook his head.

“No, you can’t come with me.  Because—­don’t you see, dear?”—­very gently and pitifully.  “As my wife, as cousin of the Grand Duchess herself, you couldn’t still be—­a professional singer.”

There was a long silence.  Slowly Diana drew away from her husband, staring at him with dilated eyes.

“Then that—­that was what Baroni meant when, he told me a time would come when your wife could no longer sing in public?”

Max bent his head.

“Yes.  That was what he meant.”

Diana stood silently clasping and unclasping her hands.  Presently she spoke again, and there was a new note in her voice—­a note of quiet gravity and steadfast decision.

“Dear, I am coming with you.  The singing”—­smiling a little tremulously—­“doesn’t count—­against love.”

Max made a sudden movement as though to take her in his arms, then checked himself as suddenly.

“No,” he said quietly.  “You can’t come with me.  It would be impossible—­out of the question.  You haven’t realised all it would entail.  After being a famous singer—­to become merely a private gentlewoman—­a lady of a little unimportant Court!  The very idea is absurd.  Always you would miss the splendour of your life, the triumphs, the being feted and made much of—­everything that your singing has brought you.  It would be inevitable.  And I couldn’t endure to see the regret growing in your eyes day by day.  Oh, my dear, don’t think I don’t realise the generosity of the thought—­and bless you for it a thousand times!  But I won’t let you pay with the rest of your life for a heaven-kind impulse of the moment.”

His words fell on Diana’s consciousness, each one weighted with a world of significance, for she knew, even as she listened, that he spoke but the bare truth.

Very quietly she moved away from him and stood by the chimney-piece, staring down into the grate where the embers lay dying.  It seemed to typify what her life would be, shorn of the glamour with which her glorious voice had decked it.  It would be as though one had plucked out the glowing heart of a fire, leaving only ashes—­dead ashes of remembrance.

And in exchange for the joyous freedom of Bohemia, the happy brotherhood of artistes, there would be the deadly, daily ceremonial of a court, the petty jealousies and intrigues of a palace!

Very clearly Diana saw what the choice involved, and with that clear vision came the realisation that here was a sacrifice which she, who had so profaned love’s temple, could yet make at the foot of the altar.  And within her grew and deepened the certainty that no sacrifice in the world is too great to make for the sake of love, except the sacrifice of honour.

Here at last was something she could give to the man she loved.  She need not go to him with empty hands. . . .