“Yes, I remember,” she said quietly.

“And you still ask me to play for you?”

“I still ask you.”

Davilof laughed.

“You amaze me!  And supposing I reply by saying I refuse?”

“But you won’t,” dared Magda.

Davilof’s eyes held something of cruelty in their hazel depths as he answered quietly: 

“On the contrary—­I do refuse.”

Her hand went up to her throat.  It was going to be more difficult than she had anticipated!

“There is no one else who can play for me as you do,” she suggested.

“No,” fiercely.  “Because no one loves you as I do.”

“What is the use of saying you love me when you won’t do the one little thing I ask?” she retorted.  “It is not often that I ask favours.  And—­and no one has ever refused me a request before.”

Davilof could hear the note of proud resentment in her voice, and he realised to the full that, in view of all that had passed between them in the Mirror Room, it must have been a difficult matter for a woman of Magda’s temperament to bring herself to ask his help.

But he had no intention of sparing her.  None but himself knew how bitterly she had hurt him, how cruelly she had stung his pride, when she had flung him that contemptuous command:  “I shall want you to-morrow, Davilof!—­same time.”  He had unveiled his very soul before her—­and in return she had tossed him an order as though he were a lackey who had taken a liberty.  All his pain and brooding resentment came boiling up to the surface.

“If I meant anything to you,” he said slowly, “if you had even looked upon me as a friend, you could have asked what you liked of me.  But you showed me once—­very clearly—­that in your eyes I was nothing more than your paid accompanist.  Very well, then!  Pay me—­and I’ll play for you to-night.”

“Pay you?”

“Oh, not in money”—­with a short laugh.

“Then—­then what do you mean?” Her face had whitened a little.

“It’s quite simple.  Later on there is a dance.  Give me a dance with you!”

Magda hesitated.  In other circumstances she would have refused point-blank.  Davilof had offended her—­and more than that, the revelation of the upsettingly vehement order of his passion for her that day in the Mirror Room had frightened her not a little.  There was something stormy and elemental about it.  To the caloric Pole, love was love, and the fulfilment of his passion for the adored woman the supreme necessity of life.

Realising that she had to withstand an ardour essentially unEnglish in its violently inflammable quality, Magda was loth to add fuel to the flame.  And if she promised to dance with Davilof she must let him hold her in his arms, risk that dangerous proximity which, she knew now, would set the man’s wild pulses racing unsteadily and probably serve as the preliminary to another tempestuous scene.