“Yes—­thank God,” answered Diana simply.

The car, which was to take the accompanist on to Brutton Square, slipped away down the lamp-lit street, and Diana fled upstairs to her room.

She must be alone—­alone with her thoughts.  She no longer dreaded the night and its quiet solitude.  It was a solitude pervaded by a deep, abiding peace, the anteroom of happiness.

To-morrow she would go to Max, and tell him that love had taught her belief and faith—­all that he had asked of her and that she had so failed to give.

She lay long awake, gazing into the dark, dreamily conscious of utter peace and calm.  To-morrow . . . to-morrow . . .  Freely her eyes closed and she slept.  Once she stirred and smiled a little in her sleep while the word “Max” fluttered from between her lips, almost as though it had been a prayer.

CHAPTER XXV

BREAKING-POINT

When Diana woke the following morning it was to a drowsy sense of utter peace and content.  She wondered vaguely what had given rise to it.  Usually, when she came back to the waking world, it was with a shrinking almost akin to terror that a new day had begun and must be lived through—­twelve empty, meaningless hours of it.

As full consciousness returned, the remembrance of yesterday’s meeting with Max, and of all that had succeeded it, flashed into her mind like a sudden ray of sunlight, and she realised that what had tinged her thoughts with rose-colour was the quiet happiness, bred of her determination to return to her husband, which had lain stored at the back of her brain during the hours of unconsciousness.

She sat up in bed, vividly, joyously awake, just as her maid came in with her breakfast tray.

“Make haste, Milling,” she exclaimed, a thrill of eager excitement in her voice.  “It’s a lovely morning, and there’s so much going to happen to-day that I can’t waste any time over breakfast.”

It was the old, impetuous Diana who spoke, impulsively carried away by the emotion of the moment.

“Is there, madam?” Milling, arranging the breakfast things on a little table beside the bed, regarded her mistress affectionately.  It was long, very long, since she had seen her with that look of happy anticipation in her face—­never since the good days at Lilac Lodge, before she had quarrelled so irrevocably with her husband—­and the maid wondered whether it foretokened a reconciliation.  “Is there, madam?  Then I’m glad it’s a fine day.  It’s a good omen.”

Diana smiled at her.

“Yes,” she repeated contentedly.  “It’s a good omen.”

Milling paused on her way out of the room.

“If you please, madam, Signor Baroni would like to know at what time you will be ready to rehearse your songs for to-night, so that he can telephone through to Miss Lermontof?”