"You don't know what love means!"
The words penetrated to her innermost consciousness, cleaving their way
sheer through the fog of doubt and mistrust and pride as the sharp
blade of the surgeon's knife cuts deep into a festering wound. And
before their clarifying, essential truth, Diana's soul recoiled in dumb
dismay.
No, she hadn't known what love meant--love, which, with an exquisite
unreasonableness, believes when there is ground for doubt--hadn't
understood it as even this cynical, bitter-tongued Russian understood
it. And she recognised the scorn on Olga's white, contemptuous face as
the unlovely sheath of an ideal of love immeasurably beyond her own
achieving.
The vision of Culver Point faded away, and an impalpable wall of
darkness seemed to close about her. Dimly, as though it were some one
else's voice speaking, she heard herself say slowly:--
"I thought I loved him." Then, after a pause, "Will you go? Please
go. I should like to be . . . quiet . . . a little while."
For a moment Olga gazed down at her, eagerly, almost hungrily, as
though silently beseeching her. Then, still silently, she went away.
Diana sat very still. Above her, the gay-coloured Chinese lanterns
swayed to and fro in the little breeze that drifted up the street, and
above again, far off in the sombre sky, the stars looked
down--pitiless, unmoved, as they have looked down through all the ages
upon the pigmy joys and sufferings of humanity.
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