“Oh, damn!” said Nick to the world at large.  And then he gently released himself and knelt beside her.  “Look here, Olga darling!  There’s nothing to frighten you.  I’m not a headlong fool.  There!  Dry your eyes, and be sensible!  What’s the beast been up to?  Made love to you, has he?”

His bony hand grasped hers again very vitally, very reassuringly.  Almost insensibly she yielded herself to his control.  Quiveringly she began to tell him of the morning’s happenings.

Perhaps it was as well that she did not see Nick’s face as she did so, or she might have found it difficult to continue.  As it was she spoke haltingly, with many pauses, describing to him Hunt-Goring’s arrival and invitation, her own dilemma, her final surrender.

“I couldn’t help it, Nick,” she said, still fast clinging to his hand.  “I couldn’t let her go alone.”

“Go on,” said Nick.

And then she told him of Hunt-Goring’s overture, her own sick repulsion for the man, his persistence, his brutality.

At that abruptly Nick broke in.  “Before you go any farther—­has he ever made love to you before?”

She answered him because she had no choice.  “Yes, Nick.  But I always hated him.”

“And you didn’t tell me,” he said.

There was no note of reproach in his tone, yet in some fashion it hurt her.

“Nick—­darling, you—­you’ve only got one arm,” she said.  “And he’s such a great, strong bully.”

Nick uttered a sudden fierce laugh.  His hand was clenched.  “You women!” he said, and for some reason Olga felt overwhelmingly foolish.

“Well, finish!” he commanded.  “No half-measures, mind!  Just the whole truth!”

And Olga stumbled on.  She repeated with quivering lips Hunt-Goring’s story of the taint in Violet’s blood, of the tragedy that had preceded her birth.

“Nick,” she said, turning piteous eyes upon his face, “I know it must be partly true, but do you think it is really quite as bad as that?  I believed it at the time.  But—­but—­perhaps—­”

He shook his head.  “It’s true,” he said briefly.

“True that she is going—­mad?  Oh, Nick—­Nick!”

He slipped his arm around her.  “And the devil told her, did he?”

She leaned her forehead on his shoulder in an agony of quivering recollection.  “Because I wouldn’t listen to him—­because—­because—­”

“Pass on,” said Nick.  “He told her.  What happened?”

But she could not tell him.  “It was too dreadful—­too dreadful!” she moaned.

“Where is she now?” he pursued.  “You can tell me that anyhow.”

“She has gone to Mrs. Briggs,” Olga whispered.  “She said she would know everything.  She had been her nurse from the beginning.  She—­she is in a terrible state, Nick.  I only came away to tell you.  I thought you would be getting anxious, or I wouldn’t have left her.  I ran up the cliff path.  It was quickest.”