you might have been saved!«
    »I fancy I was doomed from the beginning.«
    »I was worth a thought?«
    »Worth a life! worth ten thousand!«
    »You have reckoned it all like a sane man: - family, position, the world,
the scandal?«
    »All. I have long known that you were the mate for me. You have to weather a
gale, Tony. It won't last. My dearest! it won't last many months. I regret the
trial for you, but I shall be with you, burning for the day to reinstate you and
show you the queen you are.«
    »Yes, we two can have no covert dealings, Percy,« said Diana. They would be
hateful - baseness! Rejecting any baseness, it seemed to her that she stood in
some brightness. The light was of a lurid sort. She called on her heart to glory
in it as the light of tried love, the love that defied the world. Her heart
rose. She and he would at a single step give proof of their love for one
another: and this kingdom of love - how different from her recent craven
languors! - this kingdom awaited her, was hers for one word; and beset with the
oceans of enemies, it was unassailable. If only they were true to the love they
vowed, no human force could subvert it: and she doubted him as little as of
herself. This new kingdom of love, never entered by her, acclaiming her, was
well-nigh unimaginable, in spite of the many hooded messengers it had despatched
to her of late. She could hardly believe that it had come.
    »But see me as I am,« she said; she faltered it through her direct gaze on
him.
    »With chains to strike off? Certainly; it is done,« he replied.
    »Rather heavier than those of the slave-market! I am the deadest of burdens.
It means that your enemies, personal - if you have any, and political - you have
numbers, will raise a cry. ... Realize it. You may still be my friend. I forgive
the bit of wildness.«
    She provoked a renewed kissing of her hand; for magnanimity in love is an
overflowing danger; and when he said: »The burden you have to bear outweighs
mine out of all comparison. What is it to a man - a public man or not! The woman
is always the victim. That's why I have held myself in