Olga was living in the seventh heaven just then, and her radiant face proclaimed it.  “I’m learning to drive,” she told Muriel.  “It’s the greatest fun.  You would just love it.  I know you would.”  She stood fondling the horses and chattering while the two men wrestled with the motor’s internal arrangements, and Muriel longed desperately to give her animal the rein and flee away from the mocking sprite that gibed at her from Nick’s eyes.  Whence came it, this feeling of insecurity, this perpetual sense of fighting against the inevitable?  She had fancied that Blake’s presence would be her safeguard, but now she bitterly realised that it made no difference to her.  He stood as it were outside the ropes, and was powerless to intervene.

Suddenly she saw them stand up.  The business was done.  They stood for a second side by side—­Blake gigantic, well-proportioned, splendidly strong; Nick, meagre, maimed, almost shrunken, it seemed.  But in that second she knew with unerring conviction that the greater fighter of the two was the man against whom she had pitted her quivering woman’s strength.  She knew at a single glance that for all his bodily weakness Nick possessed the power to dominate even so mighty a giant as Blake.  What she had said to herself many a time before, she said again.  He was abnormal, superhuman even; more—­where he chose to exert himself, he was irresistible.

The realisation went through her, sharp and piercing, horribly distinct.  She had sought shelter like a frightened rabbit in the densest cover she could find, but, crouching low, she heard the rush of the remorseless wings above her.  She knew that at any moment he could rend her refuge to pieces and hold her at his mercy.

Abruptly he left Blake and came to her side.  “I want you and Grange to come to Redlands for luncheon,” he said.  “Olga is hostess there.  Don’t refuse.”

“Oh, do come!” urged Olga, dancing eagerly upon one leg.  “You’ve never been to Redlands, have you?  It’s such a lovely place.  Say you’ll come, Muriel.”

Muriel scarcely heard her.  She was looking down into Nick’s face, seeking, seeking for the hundredth time, to read that baffling mask.

“Don’t refuse,” he said again.  “You’ll get nothing but underdone chops at the inn here, and I can’t imagine that to be a weakness of yours.”

She gave up her fruitless search.  “I will come,” she said.

“It’s exactly as you like, you know, Muriel,” Grange put in awkwardly.

She understood the precise meaning of Nick’s laugh.  She even for a moment wanted to laugh herself.  “Thank you.  I should like to,” she said.

Nick nodded and turned aside.  “Olga, stop capering,” he ordered, “and drive me home.”

Olga obeyed him promptly, with the gaiety of a squirrel.  As Nick seated himself by her side, Muriel saw her turn impulsively and rub her cheek against his shoulder.  It gave her a queer little tingling shock to see the child’s perfect confidence in him.  But then—­but then—­Olga had never looked on horror, had never seen the devil leap out in naked fury upon her hero’s face.