She laughed.  “You’re much funnier than Max because you don’t try to be.  What do you mean by saying that I dragged you here?  Was it that silly old song?”

“In part,” said Nick cautiously.

“And the other part?”

“I won’t put that into words.  It would sound fulsome.”

“Oh, please don’t!” she said lightly.  “And you, Max, what did you come for?”

He seated himself in the chair which Olga had vacated.  “I thought it was time someone came to look after you,” he said.

“How inane!  You don’t pretend to be musical, I hope?”

He leaned back, directly facing her.  “No,” he said.  “I don’t pretend.”

“Never?” she said.

He smiled in his own enigmatical fashion.  “That is the sort of question I never answer.”

She nodded gaily.  “I knew you wouldn’t.  Why do you look at me like that?  I feel as if I were being dissected.  I don’t wonder that Olga runs away when she sees you coming.  I shall myself in a minute.”

He laughed.  “Surely you are accustomed to being looked at!”

“With reverence,” she supplemented, “not criticism!  You have the eye of a calculating apothecary.  I believe you regard everybody you meet in the light of a possible patient.”

“Naturally,” said Max.  “I suppose even you are mortal.”

“Oh, yes, I shall die some day like the rest of you,” she answered flippantly.  “But I shan’t have you by my death-bed.  I shouldn’t think you had ever seen anybody die, have you?”

“Why not?” said Max.

“Nobody could with you standing by.  You’re too vital, too electric.  I picture you with your back against the door and your arms spread out, hounding the poor wretch back into the prison-house.”

Max got up abruptly and moved to the window.  “You have a vivid imagination,” he said.

She laughed, drawing her fingers idly across the strings of her mandolin.

“Quite nightmarishly so sometimes.  It’s rather a drawback for some things.  How are you enjoying that book of mine?  Do you appreciate the Arabian Nights’ flavour in modern literature?”

“It’s a bit rank, isn’t it?” said Max.

She laughed up at him.  “I should have thought you would have been virile enough to like rank things.  To judge by the tobacco you smoke, you do.”

“Poisonous, isn’t it?” said Nick.  “I suppose it soothes his nerves, but it sets everyone else’s on edge.”

Violet stretched out her hand to a box of cigarettes that stood on a table within reach.  “You would probably feel insulted if I offered you one of these,” she said, “but I practically live on them.”

“Very bad for you,” said Max.

She snapped her fingers at him.  “Then I shall certainly continue the pernicious habit.  Do you know Major Hunt-Goring?  It was he who gave them to me.  He thinks he is going to marry me,—­but he isn’t!”

“Great Lucifer!” said Nick.