"I can"t keep that compact."
Diana"s heart contracted with a sudden fear.
"Can"t keep it?" she repeated dully. She could not picture her life--no--robbed of this friendship!
"No." His hands hung clenched at his sides, and he stood staring at her from beneath bent brows, his mouth set in a straight line. It was as though he were holding himself under a rigid restraint, against which something within him battled, striving for release.
All at once his control snapped.
"I love you! . . . G.o.d in heaven! Haven"t you guessed it?"
The words broke from him like a bitter cry--the cry of a heart torn in twain by love and thwarted longing. Diana felt the urgency of its demand thrill through her whole being.
"Max . . ."
It was the merest whisper, reaching his ears like the touch of a b.u.t.terfly"s wing--hesitantly shy, and honey-sweet with the promise of summer.
The next instant his arms were round her and he was holding her as though he would never let her go, pa.s.sionately kissing the soft mouth, so close beneath his own. He lifted her off her feet, crushing her to him, and Diana, the woman in her definitely, vividly aroused at last, clung to him yielding, but half-terrified by the tempest of emotion she had waked.
"My beloved! . . . _My soul_!"
His voice was vehement with the love and pa.s.sion at length unleashed from bondage; his kisses hurt her. There was something torrential, overwhelming, in his imperious wooing. He held her with the fierce, possessive grip of primitive man claiming the chosen woman as his mate.
She struggled faintly against him.
"Ah! Max--Max . . . . Let me go. You"re frightening me."
She heard him draw his breath hard, and then slowly, reluctantly, as though by a sheer effort of will, he set her down. He was white to the lips, and his eyes glowed like blue flame in their pallid setting.
"Frighten you!" he repeated hoa.r.s.ely. "You don"t know what love means--you English."
Diana stared at him.
""You English!" What--what are you saying? Max, aren"t you English after all?"
He threw back his head with a laugh.
"Oh, yes, I"m English. But I"m something else as well. . . . There"s warmer blood in my veins, and I can"t love like an Englishman. Oh, Diana, heart"s beloved, let me teach you what love is!"
Impetuously he caught her in his arms again, and once more she felt the storm of his pa.s.sion sweep over her as he rained fierce kisses on eyes and throat and lips. For a s.p.a.ce it seemed as if the whole world were blotted out and there were only they two alone together--shaken to the very foundations of their being by the tremendous force of the whirlwind of love which had engulfed them.
When at length he released her, all her reserves were down.
"Max . . . Max . . . I love you!"
The confession fell from her lips with a timid, exquisite abandon. He was her mate and she recognised it. He had conquered her.
Presently he put her from him, very gently, but decisively.
"Diana, heart"s dearest, there is something more--something I have not told you yet."
She looked at him with sudden apprehension in her eyes.
"Max! . . . Nothing--nothing that need come between us?"
Memories of the past, of all the incomprehensible episodes of their acquaintance--his refusal to recognise her, his reluctance to accept her friendship--came crowding in upon her, threatening the destruction of her new-found happiness.
"Not if you can be strong--not if you"ll trust me." He looked at her searchingly.
"Trust you? But I do trust you. Should I have . . . Oh, Max!" the warm colour dyed her face from chin to brow--"Could I love you if I didn"t trust you?"
There was a tender, almost compa.s.sionate expression in his eyes as he answered, rather sadly:--
"Ah, my dear, we don"t know what "trust" really means until we are called upon to give it. . . . And I want so much from you!"
Diana slipped her hand confidently into his.
"Tell me," she said, smiling at him. "I don"t think I shall fail you."
He was silent for a while, wondering if the next words he spoke would set them as far apart as though the previous hour had never been. At last he spoke.
"Do you believe that husbands and wives should have no secrets from one another?" he asked abruptly.
Diana had never really given the matter consideration--never formulated such a question in her mind. But now, in the light of love"s awakening; she instinctively knew the answer to it. Her opinion leaped into life fully formed; she was aware, without the shadow of a doubt, of her own feelings on the subject.
"Certainly they shouldn"t," she answered promptly. "Why, Max, that would be breaking the very link that binds them together--their _oneness_ each with the other. You think that, too, don"t you?
Why--why did you ask me?" A premonition of evil a.s.sailed her, and her voice trembled a little.
"I asked you because--because if you marry me you will have to face the fact that there is a secret in my life which I cannot share with you--something I can"t tell you about." Then, as he saw the blank look on her face, he went on rapidly: "It will be the only thing, beloved.
There shall be nothing else in life that will not be "ours," between us, shared by us both. I swear it! . . . Diana, I must make you understand. It was because of this--this secret--that I kept away from you. You couldn"t understand--oh! I saw it in your face sometimes.
You were hurt by what I did and said, and it tortured me to hurt you--to see your lip quiver, your eyes suddenly grow misty, and to know it was I who had wounded you, I, who would give the last drop of blood in my body to save you pain."
There was a curious stricken expression on the face Diana turned towards him.
"So that was it!"
"Yes, that was it. I tried to put you out of my life, for I"d no right to ask you into it. And I"ve failed! I can"t do without you"--his voice gathered intensity--"I want you--body and soul I want you. And yet--a secret between husband and wife is a burden no man should ask a woman to bear."
When next Diana spoke it was in a curiously cold, collected voice. She felt stunned. A great wall seemed to be rising up betwixt herself and Max; all her golden visions for the future were falling about her in ruins.
"You are right," she said slowly. "No man should ask--that--of his wife."
Errington"s face twisted with pain.
"I never meant to let you know I cared," he answered. "I fought down my love for you just because of that. And then--it grew too strong for me. . . . My G.o.d! If you knew what it"s been like--to be near you, with you, constantly, and yet to feel that you were as far removed from me as the sun itself. Diana--beloved--can"t you trust me over this one thing? Isn"t your love strong enough for that?"
She turned on him pa.s.sionately.