. . . Adrienne had smiled at her encouragingly from across the room, and Jerry Leigh had been standing at the far end near some big double doors. There were double doors to this room, too, flung wide open. (It was odd how clearly she could recall it all; her mind seemed to be working quite independently of what was going on around her.) And Max had been there. She remembered how she had believed him to be still abroad, and then, how she had looked up and suddenly met his gaze across those rows and rows of unfamiliar faces. He had come back. Instinctively she glanced towards the far end of the room, where, on that other night and in that other room, he had been standing, and then . . . then . . . was it still only the dream, the memory of long ago? . . . Or had God worked a miracle? . . . Over the heads of the people, Max's eyes, grave and tender, but unspeakably sad, looked into hers! A hand seemed to grip her heart, squeezing it so that she could not draw her breath. Everything grew blurred and dim about her, but through the blur she could still see Max, standing with his head thrown back against the panelling of the door, his arms folded across his chest, and his eyes--those grave, questioning eyes--fixed on her face. Presently the darkness cleared away and she found that she was still singing--mechanically her voice had answered to the long training of years. But the audience had heard the great _prima donna_ catch her breath and falter in her song. For an instant it had seemed almost as though she might break down. Then the tension passed, and the lovely voice, upborne by a limitless technique, had floated out again, golden and perfect as before. It was only the habit of surpassing art which had enabled Diana to finish her song. Since last night, when she had seen Max for that brief moment at the Embassy, she had passed through the whole gamut of emotion, glimpsed the vision of coming happiness, only to believe that with her own hands she had pushed it aside. And now she was conscious of nothing but that Max--Max, the man she loved--was here, close to her once again, and that her heart was crying out for him. He was hers, her mate out of the whole world, and in a sudden blinding flash of self-revelation, she recognised in her refusal to return to him a sheer denial of the divine altruism of love. The blank, bewildering chaos of the last twelve hours, with its turmoil of conflicting passions, took on a new aspect, and all at once that which had been dark was become light.