Noel’s mouth hardened a little.  “I’m very sorry,” he said.  “But we must.  He’s been circulating a lot of lies about—­Max.”  He paused an instant, looking straight down at her.  “Max is a good chap, you know,” he said.  “It’s up to me to defend him.”

Olga’s face quivered, but she kept her eyes lifted.  “You can’t,” she said, her voice very low.

“Can’t I, though?” Hotly he threw back the words.  “You don’t mean to say you believe it?”

“I know it is true,” she said.

“My dear Olga,—­” he began.

But she checked him, her hand upon his arm.  “Noel,” she said, “truly I can’t talk about this.  But that story is—­true, in part at least.  Max admitted it—­himself—­to me.”

“Impossible!” ejaculated Noel.

Her fingers closed over his sleeve; her hold was beseeching.  “I can’t argue with you, Noel,” she said.  “But I know it is true.  You see, I was there.”

He stared at her in stupefaction.  “Olga, I can’t believe it!”

“It is true,” she said again.

“But—­” Noel began to waver in spite of himself—­“if you were there, you must have known all along!”

Her brows drew into the old lines of perplexity.  “You see, I was ill,” she said.  “I—­I didn’t remember.  I don’t remember all the details even now.  I only know that—­it happened.  Max told me so—­when I asked him.”

“Good heavens above!” ejaculated Noel.

She went on drearily, as if he had not spoken.  “That was the end of everything between us; and it’s just as well now.  For I shouldn’t have been able to marry him even if it hadn’t been.”

“Why not?” said Noel.

She looked away from him, and was silent.

He leaned down towards her, and spoke quickly, urgently.

“Olga dear, forgive me for asking, but I must know.  Don’t you really love him?”

She made a little unconscious gesture of the hands as of pushing something from her.  “No,” she said.

“But you did?” he insisted.

She leaned her elbow on her knee, lodging her chin upon her hand.  “I thought I did—­once,” she said slowly.  “But—­it was a mistake.”

“It couldn’t have been,” he said.

She nodded slowly two or three times, not turning her head.  “Yes,” she said, with the air of one clinching an argument.  “It was a mistake.”

Noel was silent for a few moments.  There was something in her set profile that hurt him.  He longed to see her full face.  But she did not move.  She seemed almost to have forgotten that he was there.

He moved at last, bending nearer.  “Olga!” he whispered.

“Yes?” Still she did not turn.

He slipped down to his knees beside her.  “Olga!” he said again very pleadingly.

She stirred then, stirred and looked him full in the eyes.  And all his life Noel remembered the awful despair that looked out at him from her soul “I—­can’t!” she said.