"O, I do!" said Diana. "I cannot think of anything lovelier than to see those faces change with the knowledge of Christ." "Then you would be willing to leave our present field of work?" "It does not seem to want us as this does--not by many fold." "Would your mother leave Pleasant Valley?" "No." "How, then, Di, about you? "The first question is duty, Basil." "I think mine is to come here." "Then it must be mine," said Diana, with a sort of disappointment upon her that he should speak in that way. "And would it be your pleasure too?" "Why, certainly. Basil, I cannot _imagine_ pleasure to be apart from duty." "Thank you," he said gently. "And I thank God, who has brought you so far in your lesson-learning as to know that." Diana said no more. She was ready to cry, with the feeling that her husband thought himself to have so little to do with her pleasure. Tears, however, were not much in her way, and she did not shed any, but she speculated. _Had_ he really to do with her pleasure? It was different certainly once. She had craved to be at a distance from him; she could remember the time well; but the time was past. Was it reasonable to expect him to know that fact? He had thoroughly learned the bitter truth that her heart was not his, and could never be his; what should tell him that the conditions of things were changed. _Were_ they changed? Diana was in great confusion. She began to think she did not know herself. She did not hate Mr. Masters any more; nay, she declared to herself she never had hated him; she always had liked him; only then she had loved Evan Knowlton, and now that was gone. She did not love anybody. There was no reason in the world why Mr. Masters should not be contented. "I think," said Diana to herself, "I give him enough of my heart to content him. I wonder what would content him? I do not care two straws for anybody else in all the world. He would say, if I told him that, he would say it is a negative proposition. Suppose I could go further"--and Diana's cheeks began to burn--"suppose I could, I could not possibly stand up and tell him so. I cannot. He ought to see it for himself. But he does not. He ought to be contented--I think he might be contented--with what I give him, if it isn't just"-- Diana broke off with her thoughts very much disturbed. She thought she did not love her husband, but things were no longer clear; except that Basil's persistent ignorance of the fact that they had changed, chafed and distressed her. CHAPTER XXXVI. THE PARTY. The morning of the next day was spent in still further visits to still more mills. Mr. Brandt was much struck with the direction his guests' attention seemed to take. "You are very fond of machinery," he remarked to Diana. "Yes--I don't know much about it," she answered. "Surely that is not true after these two or three days' work?"