The question drove her to embrace the dignity of being reasonable—­under Emmy’s guidance.  For she did not stand firmly alone; her story confessed it.  Marriage might be the archway to the road of good service, even as our passage through the flesh may lead to the better state.  She had thoughts of the kind, and had them while encouraging herself to deplore the adieu to her little musk-scented sitting-room, where a modest freedom breathed, and her individuality had seemed pointing to a straighter growth.

She nodded subsequently to the truth of her happy Emma’s remark:  ’You were created for the world, Tony.’  A woman of blood and imagination in the warring world, without a mate whom she can revere, subscribes to a likeness with those independent minor realms between greedy mighty neighbours, which conspire and undermine when they do not openly threaten to devour.  So, then, this union, the return to the wedding yoke, received sanction of grey-toned reason.  She was not enamoured she could say it to herself.  She had, however, been surprised, both by the man and her unprotesting submission; surprised and warmed, unaccountably warmed.  Clearness of mind in the woman chaste by nature, however little ignorant it allowed her to be in the general review of herself, could not compass the immediately personal, with its acknowledgement of her subserviency to touch and pressure—­and more, stranger, her readiness to kindle.  She left it unexplained.  Unconsciously the image of Dacier was effaced.  Looking backward, her heart was moved to her long-constant lover with most pitying tender wonderment—­stormy man, as her threatened senses told her that he was.  Looking at him, she had to mask her being abashed and mastered.  And looking forward, her soul fell in prayer for this true man’s never repenting of his choice.  Sure of her now, Mr. Thomas Redworth had returned to the station of the courtier, and her feminine sovereignty was not ruffled to make her feel too feminine.  Another revelation was his playful talk when they were more closely intimate.  He had his humour as well as his hearty relish of hers.

‘If all Englishmen were like him!’ she chimed with Emma Dunstane’s eulogies, under the influence.

‘My dear,’ the latter replied, ’we should simply march over the Four Quarters and be blessed by the nations!  Only, avoid your trick of dashing headlong to the other extreme.  He has his faults.’

‘Tell me of them,’ Diana cooed for an answer.  ’Do.  I want the flavour.  A girl would be satisfied with superhuman excellence.  A widow asks for feature.’

’To my thinking, the case is, that if it is a widow who sees the superhuman excellence in a man, she may be very well contented to cross the bridge with him,’ rejoined Emma. . . .

’Suppose the bridge to break, and for her to fall into the water, he rescuing her—­then perhaps!’

‘But it has been happening!’

’But piecemeal, in extension, so slowly.  I go to him a derelict, bearing a story of the sea; empty of ideas.  I remember sailing out of harbour passably well freighted for commerce.’