Olga Lermontof was already there, and Diana greeted her rather nervously. She felt horribly uncertain what attitude Miss Lermontof might be expected to adopt in the circumstances. But she need have had no anxiety on that score. Olga seemed to be just her usual self--grave and self-contained, her thin, dark-browed face wearing its habitual half-mocking expression. Apparently she had wiped out the day's happenings from her mind, and had become once more merely the quiet, competent accompanist to a well-known singer. There was no one else in the artistes' room. The other performers were mingling with the guests, only withdrawing from the chattering crowd when claimed by their part in the evening's entertainment. "How far on are they?" asked Diana, picking up the programme and running her eye down it. "Your songs are the next item but one," replied Miss Lermontof. A violin solo preceded the two songs which, bracketed together in the middle of the programme as its culminating point, made the sum total of Diana's part in it, and she waited quietly in the little anteroom while the violinist played, was encored and played again, and throughout the brief interval that followed. She felt that to-night she could not face the cheap, everyday flow of talk and compliment. She would sing because she had promised, that she would, but as soon as her part was done she would slip away and go home--home, where she could sit alone by the dead embers of her happiness. A little flutter of excitement rippled through the big rooms when at last she mounted the platform. People who had hitherto been content to remain, in the hall, regarding the music as a pleasant accompaniment to the interchange of the day's news and gossip, now came flocking in through the doorways, hoping to find seats, and mostly having to content themselves with standing-room. Almost as in a dream, Diana waited for the applause to subside, her eyes roaming halt-unconsciously over the big assembly. It was all so stalely familiar--the little rustle of excitement, the preliminary clapping, the settling down to listen, and then the sea of upturned faces spread out beneath her. The memory of the first time that she had sung in public, at Adrienne's house in Somervell Street, came back to her. It had been just such an occasion as this. . . . (Olga was playing the introductory bars of accompaniment to her song, and, still as in a dream, she began to sing, the exquisite voice thrilling out into the vast room, golden and perfect.)