Dacier pressed her hand.  ’Money we shall have enough.  My uncle has left me fairly supplied.’

‘What would he think?’ said Diana, half in a glimpse of meditation.

’Think me the luckiest of the breeched.  I fancy I hear him thanking you for “making a man” of me.’

She blushed.  Some such phrase might have been spoken by Lord Dannisburgh.

‘I have but a poor sum of money,’ she said.  ’I may be able to write abroad.  Here I cannot—­if I am to be persecuted.’

‘You shall write, with a new pen!’ said Dacier.  ’You shall live, my darling Tony.  You have been held too long in this miserable suspension, neither maid nor wife, neither woman nor stockfish.  Ah! shameful.  But we ’ll right it.  The step, for us, is the most reasonable that could be considered.  You shake your head.  But the circumstances make it so.  Courage, and we come to happiness!  And that, for you and me, means work.  Look at the case of Lord and Lady Dulac.  It’s identical, except that she is no match beside you:  and I do not compare her antecedents with yours.  But she braved the leap, and forced the world to swallow it, and now, you see, she’s perfectly honoured.  I know a place on a peak of the Maritime Alps, exquisite in summer, cool, perfectly solitary, no English, snow round us, pastures at our feet, and the Mediterranean below.  There! my Tony.  To-morrow night we start.  You will meet me-shall I call here?—­well, then at the railway station, the South-Eastern, for Paris:  say, twenty minutes to eight.  I have your pledge?  You will come?’

She sighed it, then said it firmly, to be worthy of him.  Kind Fortune, peeping under the edge of her bandaged eyes, appeared willing to bestow the beginning of happiness upon one who thought she had a claim to a small taste of it before she died.  It seemed distinguishingly done, to give a bite of happiness to the starving!

’I fancied when you were announced that you came for congratulations upon your approaching marriage, Percy.’

’I shall expect to hear them from you to-morrow evening at the station, dear Tony,’ said he.

The time was again stated, the pledge repeated.  He forbore entreaties for privileges, and won her gratitude.

They named once more the place of meeting and the hour:  more significant to them than phrases of intensest love and passion.  Pressing hands sharply for pledge of good faith, they sundered.

She still had him in her eyes when he had gone.  Her old world lay shattered; her new world was up without a dawn, with but one figure, the sun of it, to light the swinging strangeness.

Was ever man more marvellously transformed? or woman more wildly swept from earth into the clouds?  So she mused in the hum of her tempest of heart and brain, forgetful of the years and the conditions preparing both of them for this explosion.

She had much to do:  the arrangements to dismiss her servants, write to house-agents and her lawyer, and write fully to Emma, write the enigmatic farewell to the Esquarts and Lady Pennon, Mary Paynham, Arthur Rhodes, Whitmonby (stanch in friendship, but requiring friendly touches), Henry Wilmers, and Redworth.  He was reserved to the last, for very enigmatical adieux:  he would hear the whole story from Emma; must be left to think as he liked.