“Nobody knows I can do anything but check the tradesmen’s books and order the dinner.” This was a fact,--nobody knew. Ordinary people considered her unattractive; what they saw was a scraggy woman of medium height with a worn face visibly beginning to wrinkle under a profusion of brown hair,--a woman who “had been” pretty when younger, but who now had a rather restrained and nervous manner, and who was seldom inclined to speak,--yet, who, when spoken to, answered always gently, in a sweet voice with a wonderfully musical accentuation. No one thought for a moment that she might possibly be something of a scholar,--and certainly no one imagined that above all things she was a great student of all matters pertaining to science. Every book she could hear of on scientific subjects, whether treating of wireless telegraphy, light-rays, radium, or other marvellous discoveries of the age, she made it her special business to secure and to study patiently and comprehendingly, the result being that her mind was richly stored with material for thought on far higher planes than the majority of reading folk ever attempt to reach. But she never spoke of the things in which she was so deeply interested, and as she was reserved and almost awkwardly shy in company, the occasional callers on her mother scarcely noticed her, except casually and with a careless civility which meant nothing. She was seen to knit and to do Jacobean tapestry rather well, and people spoke to her of these accomplishments as being what they thought she was most likely to understand,--but they looked askance at her dress, which was always a little tasteless and unbecoming, and opined that “poor dear Mrs. May must be dreadfully disappointed in her daughter!” It never occurred to these easy-tongued folk that Diana was dreadfully disappointed in herself. This was the trouble of it. She asked the question daily and could find no answer. And yet,--she was useful to her parents surely? Yes,--but in her own heart she knew they would have been just as satisfied with a paid “companion housekeeper.” They did not really “love” her, now that she had turned out such a failure. Alas, poor Diana! Her hunger for “love” was her misfortune; it was the one thing in all the world she craved. It had been this desire of love that had charmed her impulsive soul when in the heyday of her youth and prettiness, she had engaged herself to the man for whom she had waited seven years, only to be heartlessly thrown over at last. She had returned all his letters in exchange for her own at the end of the affair,--all, save two,--and these two she read every night before she said her prayers to keep them well fixed in her memory. One of them contained the following passage: