Olga’s pale eyes gleamed for an instant like steel suddenly bared to the sun.  She said nothing whatever, merely stood before him very stiff and straight, plainly waiting for him to go.

“It’s a pity to outstay one’s welcome,” he said.  “I wouldn’t do that for the world.  But what about that kiss you offered me just now?”

“I?” said Olga, quivering disdain in the word.

“You, my little spitfire!” he said genially.  “And it won’t be the first time, what?  Come now!  You’re always running away, but you should reflect that you’re bound to be caught sooner or later.  You didn’t think I was going to let you off, did you?”

She stood before him speechless, with clenched hands.

He drew a little nearer.  “You pay your debts, don’t you?  And what more suitable opportunity than the present?  You are so elusive nowadays.  Why, I haven’t seen you except from afar since last Christmas.  You were always such a nice, sociable little girl till then.”

“Sociable!” whispered Olga.

“Well, you were!” He laughed again in his easy fashion.  “Don’t you remember what fun we had at the Rectory on Christmas Eve, and how you came to tea with me on the sly a few days after, and how we kissed under the mistletoe, and how you promised—­”

“I promised nothing!” burst out Olga, with flashing eyes.

“Oh, pardon me!  You promised to kiss me again some day.  Have you forgotten?  I hardly think your memory is as short as that.”

He drew nearer still, and slipped a cajoling arm about her.  “Why are we in such a towering rage, I wonder?  Surely you don’t want to repudiate your liabilities!  You promised, you know.”

She flung up a desperate face to his.  “Very well, Major Hunt-Goring,” she said breathlessly.  “Take it—­and go!”

He bent to her.  “But you must give,” he said.

“Very well,” she said again.  “It—­it will be the last!”

“Will it?” he questioned, pausing.  “In that case, I feel almost inclined to postpone the pleasure, particularly as—­”

“Don’t torture me!” she said in a whisper half—­choked.

Her eyes were tightly shut; but Hunt-Goring’s were looking over her head, and a sudden gleam of malicious humour shone in them.  He turned them upon the white, shrinking face of the girl who stood rigid but unresisting within the circle of his arm.  And then very suddenly he bent and kissed her on the lips.

She shivered through and through and broke from him with her hands over her face.

“But you didn’t pay your debt, you know,” said Hunt-Goring amiably.  “I won’t trouble you now, however, as we are no longer alone.  Another day—­in a more secluded spot—­”

No longer alone!  Olga looked up with a gasp.  Her face was no longer pale, but flaming red.  She seemed to be burning from head to foot.

And there, not a dozen paces from her, was Maxwell Wyndham, carelessly approaching, his hands in his pockets, his hat thrust to the back of his head, a faint, supercilious smile cocking one corner of his mouth, his whole bearing one of elaborate unconsciousness.