She told herself that if he still cared for her, if he were not
utterly absorbed in Adrienne de Gervais, he would never have rested until
he had restored the old, happy relations between them.
Instinctively she sought to dull the pain at her heart by plunging
headlong into professional life. Her voice, thanks to the rest and
change of her visit to Switzerland, had regained all its former beauty,
and her return to the concert platform was received with an outburst of
popular enthusiasm. The newspapers devoted half a column apiece to the
subject, and several of them prophesied that it was in grand opera that
Madame Diana Quentin would eventually find the setting best suited to her
gifts.
"Mere concert work"--wrote one critic--"will never give her the scope
which both her temperament and her marvellous voice demand."
And with this opinion Baroni cordially concurred. It was his ultimate
ambition for Diana that she should study for grand opera, and she
herself, only too thankful to find something that would occupy her
thoughts and take her right out of herself, as it were, enabling her to
forget the overthrow of her happiness, flung herself into the work with
enthusiasm.
Gradually, as time passed on, her bitter feelings towards Max softened a
little. That light, half-ironical manner he had assumed brought back to
her so vividly the Max Errington of the early days of their acquaintance
that it recalled, too, a measure of the odd attraction he had held for
her in that far-away time.
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