For the first time since her “awakening” under the fiery ordeal of Dimitrius’s experiment, she experienced a painful thrill of real “feeling.” “No--I am sorry,” she said. “I thought I should never feel sorry for anything--but I forgot and neglected this friend--and perhaps--if I had remembered, he might not have died.” A beautiful softness and tenderness filled her eyes, and Mrs. Beresford thought she had never seen or imagined any creature half so lovely as she looked. “We must go to Paris,” she said. “We can easily start to-morrow. I will answer this wire--and then write.” She pencilled a brief reply: “Deeply grieved. Will come as soon as possible.--Diana.” --and ringing the bell, bade the servant who answered the summons take it to the telegraph office and send it off without delay. “Yes--I am very sorry!” she said again to Mrs. Beresford--“I reproach myself for needless cruelty.” Mrs. Beresford, mild-eyed and grey-haired, looked at her half timidly, half affectionately. “I’m afraid, my dear, you _are_ cruel!--just a little!” she said. “You make havoc in so many hearts!--and you do not seem to care!” Diana shrugged her shoulders. “Why should I care?” she retorted. “The havoc you speak of, is merely the selfish desire of men to possess what seems to them attractive--it goes no deeper!” Then, noting Mrs. Beresford’s rather pained expression, she smiled. “I seem hard, don’t I? But I have had experience----” “You? My dear, you are so young!” and her kindly chaperone took her hand and patted it soothingly. “When you are older you will think very differently! When you love someone----” “When I love!”--and the beautiful eyes shone glorious as light-beams--“Ah, then! Why then--‘the sun will grow cold, and the leaves of the Judgment Book will most certainly be unrolled!’” That night she came to a sudden resolve to put away all her formerly cherished ideas of revenging herself on Reginald Cleeve. Standing before her mirror she saw her own beauty transfigured into a yet finer delicacy when this determination became crystallized, as it were, in her consciousness. “What is my positive mind?” she asked herself. “It is a pole of attraction, which has through the forces of air, fire and water learned to polarise atoms into beautiful forms. It organises itself; but it is also a centre which radiates power over a world of visible effects. So that if I choose I can vitalise or _de_vitalise other forms. In this way I could inflict punishment on the traitor who spoiled my former life--but I live another life, now, in which he has no part. This being so, why should I descend to pulverise base clay with pure fire? He will meet his punishment now without any further effort of mine, beyond that which I demand of justice!” She raised her hand appealingly, as though she were a priestess invoking a deity,--then, turning to her writing-table, she penned the following lines: “To Reginald Cleeve.