And
within her grew and deepened the certainty that no sacrifice in the world
is too great to make for the sake of love, except the sacrifice of honour.
Here at last was something she could give to the man she loved. She need
not go to him with empty hands. . . .
She turned again to her husband, and her eyes were radiant with the same
soft shining that had lit them when he had first come to her in answer to
her singing.
"Dear," she said, and her voice broke softly. "Take me with you. Oh,
but you must think me very slow and stupid not to have learned--yet--what
love means! . . . Ah, Max! Max! What am I to do, dear, if you won't
let me go with you? What shall I do with all the love that is in my
heart--if you won't take it?" For a moment she stood there tremulously
smiling, while he stared at her, in his eyes a kind of bewilderment and
unbelief fighting the dawn of an unutterable joy.
Then at last he understood, and his arms went round her.
"If I won't take it!" he cried, his voice all shaken with the wonder of
it. "Oh, my sweet! I'll take it as a beggar takes a gift, as a blind
man sight--on my knees, thanking God for it--and for you."
And so Diana came again into her kingdom, whence she had wandered outcast
so many bitter months.
Presently she drew him down beside her on to a big, cushioned divan.
"Max, what a lot of time we've wasted!"
"So much, sweet, that all the rest of life we'll be making up for it.
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