But Max shook his head.  “No.  I’ll be on the verandah if she wants me, but I don’t think she will.”

Nick went to the door in silence; but ere he reached it Max spoke again.

“Nick!”

“Well?” Nick paused as if reluctant.

Very deliberately Max followed him.  They stood face to face.  “You will remember what I have said,” Max said, with slow emphasis.

“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.

“Circumstances 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—­damn 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.”