Noel was looking forward to the event with an enthusiasm that simply swept Olga along with it.  She could not help being interested and in a measure excited.  It was an absolute impossibility to be lukewarm about anything over which Noel was enthusiastic.  He kindled enthusiasm wherever he went.  Native fancy-dresses were tabooed by the regulations.  Noel was supremely contemptuous of all things native.  He meant to go as Dick Turpin himself, and she had promised to support him in a dress of the same period.  It had taken considerable thought and skill to manufacture, but it was now well on the road to completion, and she sat and stitched at it throughout the morning, trying to stifle her uneasiness in the attention which it demanded.

It was not an easy matter.  She found herself starting at every sound, and pausing to listen with nerves on edge.  Still she persisted, determined not to give way to them; and she was in fact gradually schooling herself to a calmer frame of mind, when suddenly a thing happened that bereft her in a moment of all the composure she had striven so hard to attain.  A man’s hand shot—­swiftly and stealthily—­from behind her and covered her eyes in a flash, while a man’s voice, soft and exultant, said mockingly above her head, “Guess!”

Olga uttered a cry that would have been a shriek had not the hand very swiftly shifted its position from her eyes to her mouth.  She looked up into a face she knew—­a face whose eyes of evil triumph made her heart stand still, and all her strength went suddenly from her.  She turned as white as death and sank back into the chair from which she had half-risen.  The total unexpectedness of the thing deprived her of all powers of resistance.  She sat as one stunned.

He took his hand from her lips and brutally kissed them, laughing as she shrank away from him in sick horror.  The gleaming mockery of his eyes was a thing she dared not meet.

“You will never guess what I have come for,” he said, hanging over her, his hand gripping both of hers, his face still horribly near.

Her lips moved voicelessly in answer.  She could not utter a word.

“You’re awfully pleased to see me, aren’t you?” he said.  “That’s nice of you.  I wonder when you mean to pay that debt of yours—­that old, sweet debt.”

He spoke softly, smilingly, his eyes devouring her the while.  She closed her own to avoid them.  Her heart did not seem to be beating at all.  She felt as if she were going to die of sheer horror there in his arms.

Softly again his voice came to her.  “Come, you mustn’t faint.  That wouldn’t be at all good for you.  Open your eyes!  Don’t be afraid!  Open them!”

They opened quiveringly, almost against her will.  He was holding her closely, as if he anticipated some sudden resistance.  But his eyes were on her still, burningly, possessively, menacingly.  She met them shrinking, and felt as if thereby she gave herself to him body and soul.