Left alone, Olga took up the ring-case once more, and slowly opened it.  The stones glinted in the morning light, the diamonds white and intense, the emeralds piercingly green.  She wondered why he had chosen emeralds; they seemed to her to belong to something in which he had no part.  At the back of her mind there hovered a vague, elusive something like an insect on the wing.  Suddenly it flashed into her full consciousness, and her eyes widened and grew dazed.  She saw not the shimmering iridescence of the stones, but a darting green dragon-fly which for one fleeting instant poised before her vision and the next was gone.  A sharp shudder assailed her.  She closed the case....

When she met Nick again there was no trace of agitation about her.  She seated herself behind the coffee-pot, and told him she had decided to go to church.

“I congratulate you,” said Nick.  “So have I.”

They were half-way through breakfast when there came the ring of spurred heels on the verandah.

“Hullo!” said Nick.  “Enter amorous swain!”

The colour leaped to Olga’s face.  She said nothing, and she certainly did not smile a welcome when Noel’s brown face peered merrily in upon them.

“Happy Christmas to you, good people!  May I come and break my fast, with you?  I’ve been all round the town and this is the last port of call.”

“Come in by all means!” said Nick.  “Have you brought your harp?”

Noel clapped a free and easy hand upon his shoulder.  “No, I haven’t.  I can’t harp on a full heart alone.  I’ve tied the Tempest to your garden palings.  I hope he won’t carry ’em away, for I can’t pay any damages, being broke in every sense of the word!  Good-morning, Olga!  I’m calling everyone by their Christian names this morning in honour of the day.  It’s my birthday, by the way; hence my romantic appellation.”

He dropped into a bamboo-chair and stretched out his arms with a smile of great benignity.

“I’ve even been to see Badgers,” he said.  “He was in his bath and didn’t want to admit me.  However, I gained my end, I generally do,” said Noel complacently, with one eye cocked at Olga’s rigidly unresponsive face.

“Who is Badgers?” asked Nick.

“Why, the C.O. of course.  I didn’t find him in at all a Christmas spirit; but it was beginning to sprout before I left.  I say, I hope you are providing lots of beef for our consumption, Nick.  It’s the first Christmas I’ve spent out of England, and I don’t want to be homesick.  Any form of indigestion rather than that!” He turned suddenly upon Olga.  “Why does the lady of the ceremonies preserve so uncompromising an attitude?  I feel chilled to the marrow.”

She controlled her blush before it could overwhelm her, and very sedately she made answer.  “I am not feeling very pleased with you; that’s why.”

“Great heaven!” said Noel.  “What on earth have I done?”

“You might have the decency to let me finish my breakfast in peace,” protested Nick.  “My appetite can’t thrive in a stormy atmosphere.”