She scarcely heard his answer.  She was shaking from head to foot.  “Oh, Nick,” she gasped, “I’m frightened—­I’m frightened!  I daren’t go on!”

His arm encircled her more strongly still.  He almost lifted her forward over the threshold into the cold and gloomy hall.  “Don’t be frightened, darling!  I’m with you,” he said.

She would have hung back, but her strength was gone.  She tottered weakly whither he led.  In a moment she was sitting on the old oak chest with her face to the sunshine, just as she had sat on that golden afternoon when she had come to summon Violet to her aid.

She covered her face and shivered.  Surely the place was haunted—­haunted!  In a grim procession memories began to crowd upon her.  With shrinking vision she beheld, and all the while Nick stood beside her, holding her hand, sustaining even while he compelled.

“Do you remember?” he said, and again, as she shrank and quivered, “Do you remember?”

There was something ruthless about him during those moments, something she had never encountered before, something against which she knew she would oppose herself in vain.  For the first time she saw the man as he was, felt the colossal strength of him, quivered beneath his mastery.  He was forcing her towards an obstacle from which every racked nerve winced in horror.  He was driving her, and he meant to drive her, into conflict with a force that threatened to overwhelm her utterly.

“Oh, let me go, Nick!  Let me go!” she cried in agonized entreaty.  “It’s more than I can bear.”

He knelt beside her; he held her close.  “Darling,” he said, “face it—­face it just this once!  It’s for your own peace of mind I’m doing it.”

And then she knew that no cry of hers would move him.  He was ready to help her—­if he could; but he would not suffer her to flee before that dread procession that had begun to wind like a fiery serpent through her brain.  So, in a quivering anguish of spirit such as she had never before known, she sat and faced it, faced the advancing phantom from the shadowy presence of which she had so often shrunk appalled.  And the beat of her heart rose up in the silence above the sound of the sea till she thought the mad race of it would kill her.

Slowly the seconds throbbed away, the torture swept towards her.  She was as one who, fascinated, watches a forest-fire while he waits to be engulfed.

Presently, from the shadows behind, the great dog Cork came like a ghost and gave them stately welcome.  He licked Olga’s quivering hands, standing beside her in earnest solicitude.

Nick rose to his feet and moved a little away.  His hand was hard clenched against his side.  He could not help, it seemed.  He could only look on in impotence, while she suffered.

Slowly at last Olga raised her head and looked at him with tragic eyes.  Her face was white and strained, but she had in a measure regained her self-control.