Everything grew blurred and dim about her, but
through the blur she could still see Max, standing with his head thrown
back against the panelling of the door, his arms folded across his
chest, and his eyes--those grave, questioning eyes--fixed on her face.
Presently the darkness cleared away and she found that she was still
singing--mechanically her voice had answered to the long training of
years. But the audience had heard the great _prima donna_ catch her
breath and falter in her song. For an instant it had seemed almost as
though she might break down. Then the tension passed, and the lovely
voice, upborne by a limitless technique, had floated out again, golden
and perfect as before.
It was only the habit of surpassing art which had enabled Diana to
finish her song. Since last night, when she had seen Max for that
brief moment at the Embassy, she had passed through the whole gamut of
emotion, glimpsed the vision of coming happiness, only to believe that
with her own hands she had pushed it aside. And now she was conscious
of nothing but that Max--Max, the man she loved--was here, close to her
once again, and that her heart was crying out for him. He was hers,
her mate out of the whole world, and in a sudden blinding flash of
self-revelation, she recognised in her refusal to return to him a sheer
denial of the divine altruism of love.
The blank, bewildering chaos of the last twelve hours, with its turmoil
of conflicting passions, took on a new aspect, and all at once that
which had been dark was become light.
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