I felt horribly alone, and deserted; and though I hate Di, and always have hated her, ever since the tiny child and her mother (a beautiful, rich, young Californian widow) came into my father's house in New York, she does know how to manage me better than anyone else, when I am in such moods.
I could have screamed for her, as I sat there helplessly looking through the open doors: and then, at last, I saw her, as if my wish had been a call which had reached her ears over the music in the ballroom.
She had stopped dancing, and with her partner (Lord Robert, again) entered the room which lay between our "den" and the ballroom, Probably they would have gone on to the conservatory, which can be reached in that way, but I cried her name as loudly as I could, and she heard.

Only a moment she paused--long enough to send Lord Robert away--and then she came straight to me.

He must have been furious: but I didn't care for that.
I had been wanting her badly, but when I saw her, so bright and beautiful, looking as if she were the joy of life made incarnate, I should have liked to strike her hard, first on one cheek and then the other, deepening the rose to crimson, and leaving an ugly red mark for each finger.
"Have you a headache, dear ?" she asked, in that velvet voice she keeps for me--as if I were a thing only fit for pity and protection.
"It's my heart," said I."It feels like a clock running down.

Oh, I wish I could die, and end it all! What's the good of me--to myself or anyone ?" "Don't talk like that, my poor one," she said.

"Shall I take you upstairs to your own room ?" "No, I think I should faint if I had to go upstairs," I answered.