"
To Max himself the old _maestro_ was short and to the point when chance
gave him the opportunity of a few moments alone with him.
"You haf stolen her from me, Max Errington--you haf broken your promise
that she should be free to sing."
Max responded good-humouredly:--
"She _is_ free, _Maestro_, free to do exactly as she chooses. And she
has chosen--to be my wife, to live for a time the pleasant, peaceful life
that ordinary, everyday folk may live, who are not rushed hither and
thither at the call of a career. Can you honestly say she hasn't chosen
the better part?"
Baroni was silent.
"Don't grudge her a year or two of freedom," pursued Max. "You know, you
old slave-driver, you,"--laughing--"that it is only because you want her
for your beloved Art--because you want her voice! Otherwise you would
rejoice in her happiness."
"And you--what is it you want?" retorted Baroni, unappeased. "You want
her soul! Whereas I would give her soul wings that she might send it
singing forth into an enraptured world."
But Baroni's words fell upon stony ground, and Max and Diana went their
way, absorbed in one another and in the wonderful happiness which love
had brought them.
Thus spring slipped away into summer, and the season was in full swing
when fate tossed the first pebble into their unruffled pool of joy.
It was only a brief paragraph, sandwiched in between the musical notes of
a morning paper, to which Olga Lermontof, who came daily to Lilac Lodge
to practise with Diana, drew the latter's attention.
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