The Splendid Folly Part 55

"A few moments of thinking you have come back to me."

"But I _have_ come back to you!" Her eyes grew wide and startled with a sudden, desperate apprehension. "You won't send me away again--not now?"

His face twisted with pain.

"Beloved, I must! G.o.d knows how hard it will be--but there is no other way."

"No other way?" She broke from his arms, searching his face with her frightened eyes. "What do you mean? . . . _What do you mean_? Don't you--care--any longer?"

He smiled, as a man may who is asked whether the sun will rise to-morrow.

"Not that, beloved. Never that. I've always cared, and I shall go on caring through this world and into the next--even though, after to-night, we may never be together again."

"Never--together again?" She clung to him. "Oh, why do you say such things? I can't--I can't live without you now. Max, I'm sorry--_sorry_!

I've been punished enough--don't punish me any more by sending me away from you."

"Punish you! Heart's dearest, there has never been any thought of punishment in my mind. Heaven knows, I've reproached myself bitterly enough for all the misery I've brought on you."

"Then why--why do you talk of sending me away?"

"I'm not going to send you away. It is I who have to go. Oh, beloved!

I ought never to have come here this evening. But I thought if I might see you--just once again--before I went out into the night, I should at least have that to remember. . . . And then you sang, and it seemed as though you were calling me. . . ."

"Yes," she said very softly. "I called you. I wanted you so." Then, after a moment, with sudden, womanish curiosity: "How did you know I was singing here to-night?"

"Olga told me. She's bitterly opposed to all that I've been doing, but"--smiling faintly--"she has occasional spasms of compa.s.sion, when she remembers that, after all, I'm a poor devil who's being thrust out of paradise."

"She loves you," Diana answered simply. "I think she has loved you--better--than I did, Max. But not more!" she added jealously. "No one could love you more, dear."

After a pause, she asked:

"I suppose Olga told you that I know--everything?"

"Yes. I'm glad you know"--quietly. "It makes it easier for me to tell you why I must go away--out of your life."

She leaned nearer to him, her hands on his shoulders.

"Don't go!" she whispered. "Ah, don't go!"

"I must," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Listen, beloved, and then you will see that there is no other way. . . . I married you, believing that when Nadine would be safely settled on the throne, I should be free to live my own life, free to come back to England--and you. If I had not believed that, I shouldn't have told you that I cared; I should have gone away and never seen you again. But now--now I know that I shall _never_ be free, never able to live in England."

He paused, gathering her a little closer into his arms.

"Everything is settled. Russia has helped, and Ruvania is ready to welcome Nadine's return. . . . She is in Paris, now, waiting for me to take her there. . . . It has been a long and difficult matter, and the responsibility of Nadine's well-being in England has been immense. A year ago, the truth as to her ident.i.ty leaked out somehow--reached our enemies' ears, and since then I've never really known an instant's peace concerning her safety. You remember the attack which was made on her outside the theatre?"

Diana nodded, shame-faced, remembering its ultimate outcome.

"Well, the man who shot at her was in the pay of the Republic--German pay, actually. That yarn about the actor down on his luck was cooked up for the papers, just to throw dust in the eyes of the public. . . . To watch over Nadine's safety has been my work. Now the time has come when she can go back and take her place as Grand d.u.c.h.ess of Ruvania. _And I must go with her_."

"No, no. Why need you go? You'll have done your work, set her securely on the throne. Ah, Max! don't speak of going, dear." Her voice shook incontrollably.

"There is other work still to be done, beloved--harder work, man's work.

And I can't turn away and take my shoulder from the wheel. It needs no great foresight to tell that there is trouble brewing on the Continent; a very little thing would set the whole of Europe in a blaze. And when that time arrives, if Ruvania is to come out of the struggle with her independence unimpaired, it will only be by the utmost effort of all her sons. Nadine cannot stand alone. What can a woman do unaided when the nations are fighting for supremacy? The country will need a man at the helm, and I must stand by Nadine."

"But why you? Why not another?"

"No other is under the same compulsion as I. As you know, my father put his wife first and his country second. It is difficult to blame him . . . she was very beautiful, my mother. But no man has the right to turn away from his allotted task. And because my father did that, the call to me to serve my country is doubly strong. I have to pay back that of which he robbed her."

"And have I no claim? Max! Max! Doesn't your love count at all?"

The sad, grieving words wrung his heart.

"Why, yes," he said unsteadily. "That's the biggest thing in the world--our love--isn't it? But this other is a debt of honour, and you wouldn't want me to shirk that, would you, sweet? I must pay--even if it costs me my happiness. . . . It may seem to you as though I'd set your happiness, too, aside. G.o.d knows, it hasn't been easy! But what could I do? I conceive that a man's honour stands before everything. That was why I let you believe--what you did. My word was given. I couldn't clear myself. . . . So you see, now, beloved, why we must part."

"No," she said quietly. "I don't see. Why can't I come to Ruvania with you?"

A sudden light leaped into his eyes, but it died away almost instantly.

He shook his head.

"No, you can't come with me. Because--don't you see, dear?"--very gently and pitifully. "As my wife, as cousin of the Grand d.u.c.h.ess herself, you couldn't still be--a professional singer."

There was a long silence. Slowly Diana drew away from her husband, staring at him with dilated eyes.

"Then that--that was what Baroni meant when, he told me a time would come when your wife could no longer sing in public?"

Max bent his head.

"Yes. That was what he meant."

Diana stood silently clasping and unclasping her hands. Presently she spoke again, and there was a new note in her voice--a note of quiet gravity and steadfast decision.

"Dear, I am coming with you. The singing"--smiling a little tremulously--"doesn't count--against love."

Max made a sudden movement as though to take her in his arms, then checked himself as suddenly.

"No," he said quietly. "You can't come with me. It would be impossible--out of the question. You haven't realised all it would entail. After being a famous singer--to become merely a private gentlewoman--a lady of a little unimportant Court! The very idea is absurd. Always you would miss the splendour of your life, the triumphs, the being feted and made much of--everything that your singing has brought you. It would be inevitable. And I couldn't endure to see the regret growing in your eyes day by day. Oh, my dear, don't think I don't realise the generosity of the thought--and bless you for it a thousand times! But I won't let you pay with the rest of your life for a heaven-kind impulse of the moment."

His words fell on Diana's consciousness, each one weighted with a world of significance, for she knew, even as she listened, that he spoke but the bare truth.

Very quietly she moved away from him and stood by the chimney-piece, staring down into the grate where the embers lay dying. It seemed to typify what her life would be, shorn of the glamour with which her glorious voice had decked it. It would be as though one had plucked out the glowing heart of a fire, leaving only ashes--dead ashes of remembrance.

And in exchange for the joyous freedom of Bohemia, the happy brotherhood of artistes, there would be the deadly, daily ceremonial of a court, the petty jealousies and intrigues of a palace!

Very clearly Diana saw what the choice involved, and with that clear vision came the realisation that here was a sacrifice which she, who had so profaned love's temple, could yet make at the foot of the altar. 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.