"I'm not very likely to forget it," said Nick.

"And you will abstain from interference in this matter?" Max's voice was emotionless, but it had a certain quality of compulsion notwithstanding.

Nick's eyes darted over him. His whole frame stiffened slightly. "If you think I am going to bind myself hand and foot by a promise, you're mistaken," he said.

"I am only asking you to let matters take their course," said Max, unmoved.

"Circ.u.mstances may make that impossible," said Nick.

"They may. In that case, you are free to act as you think fit. But I don't think they will--and--d.a.m.n it, Nick, it isn't much to ask. It's for her sake."

A tinge of feeling suddenly underran his speech. He flushed slowly and deeply; but he stood his ground.

As for Nick, he turned again to the door with his switch tucked under his arm. "All right," he said. "I accept the amendment."

He was gone with the words, almost as though he feared he had already yielded too far. Probably to no other man would he have yielded a single inch.

The interview had ended in a fashion extremely distasteful to him, yet he entered Olga's presence cheerily, with no sign of discontent.

"Hullo, my chicken! Not riding this morning? Haven't you slept?"

He sat down on the bed with Olga's arms very tightly round his neck, and prepared himself to make the best of a very bad business.

The night before he had soothed her in the midst of her distress with all a mother's tenderness, but by daylight he discarded the maternal _role_ and resumed his masculine limitations.

"Come!" he said coaxingly to the fair head pillowed against his shoulder. "You're going to be a sensible kiddie now? You're going to forget all yesterday's nonsense? Max won't say any more if you don't.

You've just got to kiss and be friends."

Olga little dreamed that thus cheerily he made his last stand for a hope which he knew to be forlorn.

She raised her head and looked at him with eyes that shone with the brilliance which follows the shedding of many tears. "It's no good ever thinking of that, Nick," she said, speaking quickly and nervously. "I've been awake all night, thinking--thinking. But there's no way out. I can't marry him. I can't even see him again. And, Nick,--I want you, please, to give him back his ring."

"My dear, you're not in earnest!" said Nick.

"Yes, yes, I am, dear. And I can't argue about it. My head whirls so.

Oh, Nick, why didn't you tell me when I asked you to fill in the gap?

It's such a mistaken kindness--if you only knew it--to keep back the truth--whatever it may be."

Nick groaned melancholy acquiescence. "But can't you forgive him, sweetheart? Most women can forgive anything. And you never used to be vindictive."

"I'm not vindictive," she made swift reply. "It isn't that I want to punish him. Oh, don't you understand? He may have acted up to his lights. And even if--if he had been anything but a doctor, I think it would have been a little different. But he--he knew so exactly what he was doing. And oh, Nick, I couldn't possibly marry a man who had done--that. I should never forget it. It would prey on me so, just as if--as if--I had been a party to it!" A violent shiver went through her. She clung closer to him. The horror had frozen in her eyes to a wide and gla.s.sy terror.

"Easy, easy!" said Nick gently. "We won't get hysterical. But isn't it a pity to do anything in a hurry? You won't feel so badly in a week or a fortnight. Don't do anything final yet! Put him off for a bit. He'll understand."

But Olga would not listen to this suggestion. "I must be free, Nick!"

she said feverishly. "I can't be bound to him any longer. Oh, Nick, do help me to get free!"

"My dear child, you are free," Nick a.s.sured her. "But take my advice; don't shake him off completely. Give him just a chance, poor chap! Wait six months before you quite make up your mind to have done with him.

You'll be sure to want him back if you don't."

But still Olga would not listen. "Oh, Nick, please stop!" she implored him. "I've been through it all a hundred times already, and indeed I know my own mind. If it were to drag on over six months, I don't think I could possibly bear it. No, no! It must be final now. Nick--dear, don't you understand?"

He nodded. "Yes, I do understand, Olga _mia_; but I think you are making a big mistake. The horror of the thing has blinded you temporarily. You are incapable of forming a clear judgment at present. By and by you will begin to see better. That's why I want you to wait."

"But I can't wait," she said. "It--it is like a dreadful wound, Nick. I want to bind it up quick--quick, before it gets any worse,--to hide it,--to try and forget it's there. I can't--I daren't--keep it open. I think it would kill me."

There was actual agony in her voice, and Nick saw that he had made his last stand in vain. Yet not instantly did he abandon it. Once more he thrust past her defences, though she sought so desperately to keep him out.

"It's not for us to judge each other, is it?" he said. "Be merciful, Olga! Don't you think there may have been--extenuating circ.u.mstances?"

She looked at him with quivering lips, and dumbly shook her head.

"Listen!" he said. "When Muriel and I were flying from Wara, I killed a man with my hands under her eyes. It was a ghastly business. I did it to save her life and my own. But--like you--she didn't look at the motive--only at the deed. And in consequence I became a thing abhorrent in her sight. She didn't get over it for a long time. But she forgave me at last. Can't you be equally generous? Or don't you love him well enough?"

Olga's hands clasped one another very tightly. She answered him under her breath. "I expect that's it, Nick, I don't love him any more at all.

It has killed my love."

"Then you never loved him," said Nick with conviction.

She made no attempt to contradict him. Only her strained white face seemed to implore him to torture her no further. He saw it, and his heart smote him.

"I hate to hurt you, my chicken," he said. "But, dear, you're making such a hideous muddle of your life. I hate that even worse."

She flung her arms about his neck; she pressed her lips to his yellow face. "Darling Nick, never mind about me, never mind!" she whispered. "I am doing simply what I must do. I can scarcely think or feel yet. Only I know that I must get free. It isn't that I'm hard. It's just that I have no choice. Your case was different. You had to do it. But this--" her words sank, became scarcely audible--"Nick, could anything extenuate--this?"

"G.o.d knows," said Nick. He paused a moment, then added: "I sometimes think, if the whole truth were known, there would be an extenuating circ.u.mstance for every mortal offence under the sun."

She did not argue the point. She seemed beyond argument. "Very likely,"

she said. "But really I have no choice. You see, we were such friends--such friends. And then she loved him, while he--he had nothing but a professional interest for her, till he found her case to be hopeless, and then he lost even that. That's what made it so horrible--so impossible. If he had loved her--even a little--I could have understood. But as it was--Oh, Nick, don't you see?"

Yes, he did see. It was useless to reason with her. She was like a captive bird beating wild wings for freedom and wholly unable to gauge its awful desolation when won.

For the second time he had to own himself beaten. For the second time he withdrew his forces from the field.

"Well, dear, I'm sorry," was all he said, but it conveyed much.

When he quitted her presence a little later he carried with him the ring that Max had given her and a brief and piteous message to her lover that he would not try to see her again.

Max received both in grim silence, and within half an hour of so doing he had gone.

CHAPTER XVIII

ONE MAN'S LOSS

"Oh, d.a.m.n!" said Noel.