He bent his head.

“None—­unless you can have faith.  There can be no happiness for us without that.”

He took a sudden step towards her.

“Oh, my dear, my dear!  I love you so!”

Diana began to cry softly—­helpless, pathetic, weeping, like a child’s.

“And—­and I thought we were so happy,” she sobbed.  “Now it’s all spoiled and broken.  And you’ve spoilt it!”

“Don’t!” he said unsteadily.  “Don’t cry like that.  I can’t stand it.”

He made an instinctive movement to take her in his arms, but she slipped aside, turning on him in sudden, passionate reproach.

“Why did you try and make me love you when you knew . . . all this?  I was quite happy before you came—­oh, so happy!”—­with a sudden yearning recollection of the days of unawakened girlhood.  “If—­if you had let me alone, I should have been happy still.”

The unthinking selfishness of youth rang in her voice, asserting its infinite demand for the joy and pleasure of life.

“And I?” he said, very low.  “Does my unhappiness count for nothing?  I’m paying too.  God knows, I wish we had never met.”

Never to have met!  Not to have known all that those months of friendship and a single hour of love had held!  The words brought a sudden awakening to Diana—­a new, wonderful knowledge that, cost what they might in bitterness and future pain, she would rather bear the cost than know her life emptied of those memories.

She had ceased crying.  After a few moments she spoke with a gentle, wistful composure.

“I was wrong, Max.  You’re not to blame—­you couldn’t help it any more than I could.”

“I might have gone away—­kept away from you,” he said tonelessly.

A faint, wintry little smile curved her lips.

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Diana!” He sprang forward impetuously.  “Do you mean that?”

She nodded slowly.

“Yes.  Even if—­if we can’t ever marry, we’ve had . . . to-day.”

A smouldering fire lit itself in the man’s blue eyes.  He had spoken but the bare truth when he had said that warmer blood ran in his veins than that of the cold northern peoples.

“Yes,” he said, his voice tense.  “We’ve had to-day.”

Diana trembled a little.  The memory of that fierce, wild love-making of his rushed over her once more, and the primitive woman in her longed to yield to its mastery.  But the cooler characteristics of her nature bade her pause and weigh the full significance of marrying a man whose life was tinged with mystery, and who frankly acknowledged that he bore a secret which must remain hidden, even from his wife.

It would be taking a leap in the dark, and Diana shrank from it.

“I must have time to think,” she repeated.  “I can’t decide to-day.”

“No,” he said, “you’re right.  I’ve known that all the time, only—­only”—­his voice shook—­“the touch of you, the nearness of you, blinded me.”  He paused.  “Don’t keep me waiting for your answer longer than you can help, Diana,” he added, with a quiet intensity.