Tired at last of thinking, she resolved to go to bed, and in her sleeping chamber, she found herself facing the long mirror again. Something she saw there this time appeared really to startle her, for she turned abruptly away from it, threw off her wrap, slipped into her night-gown, and brushed her hair hastily without looking at herself for another second. And kneeling at her bedside as she said her prayers she included an extra petition, uttered in a strangely earnest whisper: “From all delusions of vanity, self-love and proud thinking, good Lord, deliver me!” The next morning she awoke, filled and fired with a new resolve. She had slept well and was strong in energy and spirit, and she determined, as she expressed it to herself, to “have it out” with Dr. Dimitrius. So after breakfast, when he was about to go to his laboratory as usual, she stopped him on the way. “I want to speak to you,” she said. “Please give me a few moments of your time.” “Now?” he queried, with a slight uplifting of his eyebrows. She bent her head. “Now!” “In the library, then,” he said, and thither they went together. On entering the room he closed the door behind them and stood looking at her somewhat quizzically. “Well?” “Well!” she echoed, slightly smiling. “Are you wondering what I want to say? You ought not to wonder at all,--you ought to know!” “I know nothing!” he answered--“I may guess--but guessing is risky. I prefer to hear.” “So you _shall_ hear,”--and she drew a little closer to him--“If I express myself foolishly you must tell me,--if you think me officious or over-bold, you must reprove me--there is only one thing I will not bear from you, and that is, want of confidence!” He looked at her in something of surprise. “Want of confidence? My dear Miss Diana, you surely cannot complain on that score! I have trusted you more than I have ever trusted any man or any woman----” “Yes,” she interrupted him, quickly--“I know that wherever it is absolutely necessary to trust me you have done so. But where you think it is _un_-necessary, you have not. For example--why don’t you tell me just straight what you mean to do with me?” His dark, lustrous eyes flashed up under their drooping lids. “What I mean to do with you?” he repeated--“Why what do you imagine----”