“Diana”—­his voice deepened a little—­“am I responsible for any of the weeds in your garden?”

Her hand trembled a little under his.  After a moment she threw back her head defiantly and met his glance.

“Perhaps there’s a stinging-nettle or two labelled with your name,” she answered lightly.  “The Nettlewort Erringtonia,” she added, smiling.

Diana was growing up rapidly.

“I suppose,” he said slowly, “you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that I’m sorry—­that I’d uproot them if I could?”

She looked away from him in silence.  He could not see her expression, only the pure outline of her cheek and a little pulse that was beating rapidly in her throat.

With a sudden, impetuous movement he released her hand, almost flinging it from him.

“My application for the post of gardener is refused, I see,” he said.  “And quite rightly, too.  It was great presumption on my part.  After all”—­with bitter mockery—­“what are a handful of nettles in the garden of a prima donna?  They’ll soon be stifled beneath the wreaths of laurel and bouquets that the world will throw you.  You’ll never even feel their sting.”

“You are wrong,” said Diana, very low, “quite wrong.  They have stung me.  Mr. Errington”—­and as she turned to him he saw that her eyes were brimming with tears—­“why can’t we be friends?  You—­you have helped me so many times that I don’t understand why you treat me now . . . almost as though I were an enemy?”

“An enemy? . . .  You!”

“Yes,” she said steadily.

He was silent.

“I don’t wish to be,” she went on, an odd wistfulness in her voice.  “Can’t we—­be friends?”

Errington pushed his plate aside abruptly.

“You don’t know what you’re offering me,” he said, in hurrying tones.  “If I could only take it! . . .  But I’ve no right to make friends—­no right.  I think I’ve been singled out by fate to live alone.”

“Yet you are friends with Miss de Gervais,” she said quickly.

“I write plays for her,” he replied evasively.  “So that we are obliged to see a good deal of each other.”

“And apparently you don’t want to be friends with me.”

“There can be little in common between a mere quill-driver and—­a prima donna.”

She turned on him swiftly.

“You seem to forget that at present you are a famous dramatist, while I am merely a musical student.”

“You divested yourself of that title for ever this evening,” he returned, “It was no ‘student’ who sang ‘The Haven of Memory.’”

“All the same I shall have to study for a long time yet, Baroni tells me,”—­smiling a little.

“In that sense a great artiste is always a student.  But what I meant by saying that a mere writer has no place in a prima donna’s life was that, whereas my work is more or less a hobby, and my little bit of ’fame’—­as you choose to call it—­merely a side-issue, your work will be your whole existence.  You will live for it entirely—­your art and the world’s recognition of it will absorb every thought.  There will be no room in your life for the friendship of insignificant people like myself.”