"Then you don't love! You don't know what it means to love! Diana"--Olga's voice rose in passionate entreaty--"for God's sake go to him! He's suffered so much. Forget what people may think--what even he may think! Throw your pride overboard and remember only that he loves you and has need of you. _Go to him_!" She ceased, and her eyes implored Diana's. No matter what may have been her shortcomings--and they were many, for she was a hard, embittered woman--at least, in her devotion to her brother, Olga Lermontof approached very nearly to the heroic. There was a long silence. At last Diana spoke in low, shaken tones, her head bowed. "I can't!" she whispered. "I shall never forgive myself. And I can't ask Max to--forgive me. . . . He couldn't." The last words were hardly audible. For a moment Olga stood quite still, gazing with hard eyes at the slight figure hunched into drooping lines of utter weariness. Once her lips moved, but no sound came. Then she turned away, walking with lagging footsteps, and a minute later the door opened and closed quietly again behind her. CHAPTER XXVII CARLO BARONI EXPLAINS Diana sat on, very still, very silent, staring straight in front of her with wide, tearless eyes. Only now and again a long, shuddering sigh escaped her, like the caught breath of a child that has cried till it is utterly exhausted and can cry no more. She felt that she had come to an end of things. Nothing could undo the past, and ahead of her stretched the future, empty and void of promise. Presently the creak of the door reopening roused her, and she turned, instantly on the defensive, anticipating that Olga had come back to renew the struggle. But it was only Baroni, who approached her with a look of infinite concern on his kind old face. "My child!" he began. "My child! . . . So, then! You know all that there is to know." Diana looked up wearily. "Yes," she replied. "I know it all." The old _maestro's_ eyes softened as they rested upon her, and when he spoke again, his queer husky voice was toned to a note of extraordinary sweetness. "My dear pupil, if it had been possible, I would haf spared you this knowledge. It was wrong of Olga to tell you--above all"--his face creasing with anxiety as the ruling passion asserted itself irrepressibly--"to tell you on a day when you haf to sing!" "I made her," answered Diana listlessly. She passed her hand wearily across her forehead. "Don't worry, _Maestro_, I shall be able to sing to-night." "_Tiens_! But you are all to pieces, my child! You will drink a glass of champagne--now, at once," he insisted, adding persuasively as she shook her head, "To please me, is it not so?" Diana's lips curved in a tired smile. "Is champagne the cure for a heartache, then, _Maestro_?" Baroni's eyes grew suddenly sad.