There was no help for it.  Olga gave in without further protest.  But she did venture to say as he released her hand, “Please don’t bother about bringing me anything!  I couldn’t possibly take it.”

“Leave that to me!” said Max brusquely.

He left her then, to her unutterable relief.  There was no doubt about it; she was feeling very ill, so ill that the business of undressing was almost more than she could accomplish.  But she did manage it at last, and crept thankfully into bed, laying her throbbing head upon the pillow with the vague wonder if she would ever have the strength to lift it again.

From that she drifted into a maze of pain that blurred all thought, and from which she only roused herself to find Max once more by her side.  He was watching her closely.

“Is your head very bad?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I’ve got some stuff here that will soothe it,” he said.

“Just drink it down, and then see if you can get a sleep.”

His tone was so gentle that had her pain been less severe Olga might have found room for amazement.  As it was, she began very weakly to cry.

“Now don’t be silly!” said Max.  “You needn’t move.  I’ll do it all.”

He slipped his arm under the pillow, and lifted her.  She commanded herself and drank from the medicine-glass he held to her lips.

“What queer stuff!” she said.  “Is it—­is it ’the pain-killer’?”

“What do you know about ’the pain-killer’?” he said.

She shrank a little at the question, and he did not pursue it.  He laid her down again, settled the pillows, and left her.

Olga lay very still.  She felt as if a strange glow were dawning in her brain, a kind of mental radiance, inexpressibly wonderful, absorbing her pain as mist is absorbed by the sun.  Gradually it grew and spread till the pain was all gone, swamped, forgotten, in this curious flood of warmth and ecstasy.  It was the most marvellous sensation she had ever experienced.  Her whole being thrilled responsive to the glow.  It was as though a door had been opened somewhere above her and she were being drawn upwards by some invisible means, upwards and upwards, light as gossamer and strangely transcendentally happy, towards the warmth and brightness and wonder that lay beyond.

Up and still up her spirit seemed to soar.  Of her body she was supremely, most blissfully, unconscious.  She felt as one at the entrance of a dream-world, a world of unknown unimagined splendours, a world of golden atmosphere, of ineffable rapture, and she was floating up through the ether, eager-spirited, wrapt in delight.

And then quite suddenly she knew that Max had returned to her side.  His hand was laid upon her arm, his fingers sensitive and ruthless closed upon her pulse.

In that instant Olga also knew that her dream-world was fading from her, her paradise was lost.  Softly, inexorably, the door that had begun to open to her closed.  The hand that grasped her drew her firmly back to earth and held her there.