“There is a way,” he said, very low, and then fell silent.

“Tell me,” she urged him, smilingly.  “I like to pay my debts.”

He made no answer, and Diana, suddenly nervous and puzzled, continued a little breathlessly:—­

“Have I—­have I offended you?  I—­I thought”—­her lips quivered—­“we had agreed to be friends.”

Max was silent a moment.  Then he said slowly:—­

“I can’t keep that compact.”

Diana’s heart contracted with a sudden fear.

“Can’t keep it?” she repeated dully.  She could not picture her life—­no—­robbed of this friendship!

“No.”  His hands hung clenched at his sides, and he stood staring at her from beneath bent brows, his mouth set in a straight line.  It was as though he were holding himself under a rigid restraint, against which something within him battled, striving for release.

All at once his control snapped.

“I love you! . . .  God in heaven!  Haven’t you guessed it?”

The words broke from him like a bitter cry—­the cry of a heart torn in twain by love and thwarted longing.  Diana felt the urgency of its demand thrill through her whole being.

“Max . . .”

It was the merest whisper, reaching his ears like the touch of a butterfly’s wing—­hesitantly shy, and honey-sweet with the promise of summer.

The next instant his arms were round her and he was holding her as though he would never let her go, passionately kissing the soft mouth, so close beneath his own.  He lifted her off her feet, crushing her to him, and Diana, the woman in her definitely, vividly aroused at last, clung to him yielding, but half-terrified by the tempest of emotion she had waked.

“My beloved! . . . My soul!”

His voice was vehement with the love and passion at length unleashed from bondage; his kisses hurt her.  There was something torrential, overwhelming, in his imperious wooing.  He held her with the fierce, possessive grip of primitive man claiming the chosen woman as his mate.

She struggled faintly against him.

“Ah!  Max—­Max . . . .  Let me go.  You’re frightening me.”

She heard him draw his breath hard, and then slowly, reluctantly, as though by a sheer effort of will, he set her down.  He was white to the lips, and his eyes glowed like blue flame in their pallid setting.

“Frighten you!” he repeated hoarsely.  “You don’t know what love means—­you English.”

Diana stared at him.

“‘You English!’ What—­what are you saying?  Max, aren’t you English after all?”

He threw back his head with a laugh.

“Oh, yes, I’m English.  But I’m something else as well. . . .  There’s warmer blood in my veins, and I can’t love like an Englishman.  Oh, Diana, heart’s beloved, let me teach you what love is!”

Impetuously he caught her in his arms again, and once more she felt the storm of his passion sweep over her as he rained fierce kisses on eyes and throat and lips.  For a space it seemed as if the whole world were blotted out and there were only they two alone together—­shaken to the very foundations of their being by the tremendous force of the whirlwind of love which had engulfed them.