"Can we get away for a moment together this evening?"
Wallace was close by, and the colonel spoke so low and pinched so discreetly that she neither understood nor noticed his amenities, so she merely nodded smilingly, thanked him for his escort, and ran up the steps beside Wallace.
"I'll be in the billiard room later, if that interests you," she called back over her shoulder to Wallace as she ascended the stairs.
"It certainly does!" he replied promptly, and went away to change.
Diana continued on to her own room, disturbing Jack and Silvette on the stairs, and gaily jeering at them as she banged the door. A curious reaction had set in from the sadness of the morning--a feverish desire to escape from herself, from the misery that lay always heavy in her breast, the relentless hours that weighted her heart so that its dull beating had become a burden.
The bath refreshed her; so did the tea. She put on her little Japanese gown and her straw sandals, and curled up by the window, sipping her tea and watching the declining sun.
Dusk came swiftly, and with it Silvette who bent over and kissed her, and tasted the tea, and wandered about the rooms gossiping, too full of the joy of living to endure silence in herself or in anybody else.
Pangs of swift remorse and self-reproach stabbed her at intervals when she thought of her own happiness and remembered Diana's late unhappy affair.
How far Diana had cured herself, she did not know, but she knew that her sister was still more or less unhappy about Edgerton.
"Did you send him my note?" she inquired.
"He's a dear boy.... How well he must be doing! He ought to go down on his knees and thank you every day of his life for what he is turning out to be."
"He would have turned out all right anyway, sooner or later."
"Well, he's a horrid pig if he isn't grateful to you.... I don't suppose he has the slightest idea what his regeneration cost you."
"Don't say it, dear.... If it cost me anything, he is never going to know it."
Silvette looked at her wistfully. "If I could only see you as happy as I am, Di.... Sometimes I can scarcely bear to be as happy as I am, and remember that you are not sharing it."
"True," said Diana, smiling; "Jack can't marry us both, so we can't share your happiness, dear."