; an act whereby she was instantly melted to such
softness that a dread of him haunted her. Coward, take up your burden for
armour! she called to her poor dungeoned self wailing to have common
nourishment. She knew how prodigiously it waxed on crumbs; nay, on the
imagination of small morsels. By way of chastizing it, she reviewed her life,
her behaviour to her husband, until she sank backward to a depth deprived of air
and light. That life with her husband was a dungeon to her nature deeper than
any imposed by present conditions. She was then a revolutionary to reach to the
breath of day. She had now to be only not a coward, and she could breathe as
others did. »Women who sap the moral laws pull down the pillars of the temple on
their sex,« Emma had said. Diana perceived something of her personal debt to
civilization. Her struggles passed into the doomed CANTATRICE occupying days and
nights under pressure for immediate payment; the silencing of friend Debit,
ridiculously calling himself Credit, in contempt of sex and conduct, on the
ground that he was he solely by virtue of being she. He had got a trick of
singing operatic solos in the form and style of the delightful tenor Tellio, and
they were touching in absurdity, most real in unreality. Exquisitely trilled,
after Tellio's manner,
 
»The tradesmen all beseech ye,
The landlord, cook and maid,
Complete THE CANTATRICE,
That they may soon be paid,«
 
provoked her to laughter in pathos. He approached, posturing himself
operatically, with perpetual new verses, rhymes to Danvers, rhymes to Madame
Sybille, the cook. Seeing Tellio at one of Henry Wilmers' private concerts,
Diana's lips twitched to dimples at the likeness her familiar had assumed. She
had to compose her countenance to talk to him; but the moment of song was the
trial. Lady Singleby sat beside her, and remarked: »You have always fun going on
in you!« She partook of the general impression that Diana Warwick was too
humorous to nurse a downright passion.
    Before leaving, she engaged Diana to her annual garden-party of the closing
season, and there the meeting with Percy occurred, not unobserved. Had they been
overheard, very little to implicate them would have been gathered. He walked in
full view across the lawn to her, and they presented mask to mask.
    »The beauty of the day tempts you at last, Mrs. Warwick.«
    »I have been finishing a piece of work.«
    Lovely weather, beautiful dresses: agreed. Diana
