He was deep in conversation with the French Ambassador at the moment, but as Diana approached it was as though some sensitive, invisible live wire had vibrated, apprising him of her nearness, and he looked up suddenly, his blue eyes gazing straight into hers.

To Diana, the brief encounter proved amazingly simple and easy in contrast with the shrinking apprehensions she had formed.  A slight bow from her, its grave return from him, and the dreaded moment was past.

It was only afterwards that she realised, with a sense of sick dismay, how terribly he had altered.  She caught at the accompanist’s arm with nervous force.

“Olga!” she whispered.  “Did you see?”

The Russian’s expression answered her.  Her face wore a curious stunned look, and her mouth twitched as she tried to control the sudden trembling of her lips.

“Come outside—­on to this balcony.”  Olga spoke with a fierce imperativeness as she saw Diana sway uncertainly and her face whiten.

Once outside in the cool shelter of the balcony, dimly lit by swaying Chinese lanterns, Diana sank into a chair, shaken and unnerved.  For an instant her eyes strayed back to where, through the open French window, she could see Max still conversing with the Ambassador, but she averted them swiftly.

The change in him hurt her like the sudden stab of a knife.  His face was worn and lined; there was something ascetic-looking in the hollowed line from cheek-bone to chin and in the stern, austere closing of the lips, while the eyes—­the mocking blue eyes with the laughter always lurking at the back of them—­held an expression of deep, unalterable sadness.

“Olga!” The word broke from Diana’s white lips like a cry of appeal, tremulous and uncertain.

But Miss Lermontof made no response.  She seemed quite unmoved by the distress of the woman sitting huddled in the chair before her, and her light green eyes shone with a curious savage glint like the eyes of a cat.

Diana spoke again nervously.

“Are you—­angry with me?”

“Angry!” The Russian almost spat out the word.  “Angry!  Don’t you see what you’re doing?”

“What I’m doing?” repeated Diana.  “What am I doing?”

Olga replied with a grim incisiveness.

“You’re killing Max—­that’s all.  This—­this is going to break him—­break him utterly.”

There was a long silence, and the dewy dusk of the night, shaken into pearly mist where the flickering light of the Chinese lanterns illumined it, seemed to close round the two women, like a filmy curtain, shutting them off from the chattering throng in the adjoining room.

Presently a cart rattled past in the street below, rasping the tense silence.

Diana lifted her head.

“I didn’t know!” she said helplessly.  “I didn’t know! . . .”

“And yet you professed to love him!” Olga spoke consideringly, an element of contemptuous wonder in her voice.