And during these last few months Diana had gradually come to know the lofty strain of idealism which ran through the man’s whole nature.  Passionate, obstinate, unyielding—­he could be each and all in turn, but, side by side with these exterior characteristics, there ran a streak of almost feminine delicacy of perception and ideality of purpose.  Diana had once told him, laughingly, that he was of the stuff of which martyrs were made in the old days of persecution, and in this she had haphazard lit upon the fundamental force that shaped his actions.  The burden which fate, or his own deeds, might lay upon his shoulders, that he would bear, be it what it might.

“Everything’s got to be paid for,” he had said one day.  “It’s inevitable.  So what’s the use of jibing at the price?”

Diana wondered whether the price of that mysterious something which lay in his past, and which not even intimate friendship had revealed to her, would mean that this comradeship must always remain only that—­and never anything more?

A warm flush mounted to her face as the unbidden thought crept into her mind.  Errington had been down at Crailing most of the summer, staying at Red Gables, and during the long, lazy days they had spent together, motoring, or sailing, or tramping over Dartmoor with the keen moorland air, like sparkling wine, in their nostrils, it seemed as though a deeper note had sounded than merely that of friendship.

And yet he had said nothing, although his eyes had spoken—­those vivid blue eyes which sometimes blazed with a white heat of smouldering passion that set her heart racing madly within her.

She flinched shyly away from her own thoughts, pulling restlessly at the dried weed which clung about the surface of the rock.  A little brown crab ran out from a crevice, and, terrified by the big human hand which he espied meddling with the clump of weed and threatening to interfere with the liberty of the subject, skedaddled sideways into the safety of another cranny.

The hurried rush of the little live thing roused Diana from her day-dreams, and looking up, she saw Max coming to her across the sands.

She watched the proud, free gait of the tall figure with appreciation in her eyes.  There was something very individual and characteristic about Max’s walk—­a suggestion as of immense vitality held in check, together with a certain air of haughty resolution and command.

“I thought I might find you here,” he said, when they had shaken hands.

“Did you want me?”

He looked at her with a curious expression in his eyes.

“I always want you, I think,” he said simply.

“Well, you seem to have a faculty for always turning up when I want you,” she replied.  “I was just thinking how often you had appeared in the very nick of time.  Seriously”—­her voice took on a graver note—­“I feel I can’t ever repay you.—­you’ve come to my help so often.”