"Wait," she called softly, and came down to him, and in the darkness whispered that she was happy, so very happy--and would she see him soon?
"To-morrow," he promised, and went away with his pulses pounding.
All the way home he thought of her. She had been charming. He felt like an adventuring knight, who, having killed all the dragons, rescues the captive princess from her tower. She was a dear child. A dear--child.
At the sanatorium he had a bath and a good dinner, and made his rounds. One little woman, when he had passed, spoke to another of his smile. "It is as if he were happy in his heart," she said, quaintly; "before this his eyes have been sad."
Later the doctor found time to read his mail. On the top of the pile of letters was a thick one in a gray envelope addressed in feminine script. He opened it and read eagerly. Then he sat very still, trying, amid all the beating agony of emotion, to grasp the truth as she had told it. Diana was free. Her engagement was broken. She was coming back to America. "I am coming home to the big house--and to you--Anthony." And she would be there in just ten days!
All the way down in the train Diana kept saying to her friend, "I am so glad you are going to see my house, Sophie. You can't imagine how lovely it is."
But even then Mrs. Martens was not prepared. She was given a room on the third floor from which glass doors opened on a little balcony which overhung the harbor. It was like the upper deck of a ship with the open sea to the right and left, and with a strip of green peninsula cutting into it beyond the causeway.
"That's the Neck," Diana explained; "the yacht clubs are over there and some hotels and big houses. But I like it on this side, in the town. It's so quaint and lovely. I'll show you some of it to-morrow morning."
"I'm not going anywhere to-morrow morning. I am going to sleep until noon."
Diana bent and kissed her. "Poor thing, is she tired?"
"Well, I won't wake you. But I am going to be up with the dawn, Sophie."
Mrs. Martens turned and looked at her. "Is Anthony here?"
Diana caught her breath as she said it, and the two friends stood, silently, looking over the harbor.
The twilight was taking the blue out of the water, but the beauty was still there--with the lights on the anchored boats twinkling like stars in the grayness, and the lighthouse making a great moon above them.