"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. "Yes: I wrote him, and inclosed it." "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 talk that way, Silvie." "What way? I’m merely saying——" "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." Silvette came and sat on the arm of the chair, drawing one arm about Diana’s neck. "Do you still care for him very much?" she asked sorrowfully. "Very much." "Do you think it will last?" "Yes." "What are you going to do?" "Nothing." "Isn’t there something to do?" "Nothing." "Perhaps, all this time he really cares for you." "There is not the slightest possibility. I had my chance; he cared for me—at that moment—when he told me so.... Those men out there"—she made a vague gesture toward the unseen hills—"are no more deadly cool when they shoot than was I when I deliberately killed in him whatever love he may have had for me.... I slew it, I tell you. There is no resurrection for dead things." Silvette sighed heavily, and laid her smooth cheek against her sister’s hair. "Still," she murmured half to herself, "there are miracles." "There _were_." "There may be others yet." "No; I wounded his pride." "You aroused it."