What mattered was that it
was she who had closed it, deliberately choosing to shut him outside
her life, and cutting every cord of love and trust and belief that
bound them together.
An Englishman might have stormed or laughed, as the mood took him, and
comforted himself with the reflection that she would "get over it."
But not so Max. The sensitiveness which he hid from the world at
large, but which revealed itself in the lines of that fine-cut mouth of
his, winced under the humiliation she had put upon him. Love, in his
idea, was a thing so delicate, so rare, that Diana's crude handling of
the situation bore for him a far deeper meaning than the impulsive,
headlong action of the over-wrought girl had rightly held. To Max, it
signified the end--the denial of all the exquisite trust and
understanding which love should represent. If she could think for an
instant that he would have asked aught from her at a moment when they
were so far apart in spirit, then she had not understood the ideal
oneness of body and soul which love signified to him, and the knowledge
that she had actually sought to protect herself from him had hurt him
unbearably.
"Last night," he said slowly, "you showed me that you have no trust, no
faith in me any longer."
And Diana, misunderstanding, thinking of the secret which he would not
share with her, and impelled by the jealousy that obsessed her, replied
impetuously:--
"Yes, I meant to show you that.
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