“I must remember it,” said Olga, laughing.  “It’ll make a change from English and French slang—­Avos!”

There was a silence longer than they wished.  Olga broke it by asking abruptly: 

“Have you seen my mother?”

“Not yet.”

“I’m afraid she’s not well.”

“Then why do you keep away from her?” said Piers, with good-humoured directness.  “Is it really necessary for you to live here?  She would be much happier if you went back.”

“I’m not sure of that.”

“But I am, from what she says in her letters, and I should have thought that you, too, would prefer it to this life.”

He glanced round the room.  Olga looked vexed, and spoke with a note of irony.

“My tastes are unaccountable, I’m afraid.  You, no doubt, find it difficult to understand them.  So does my cousin Irene.  You have heard that she is going to be married?”

Piers, surprised at her change of tone, regarded her fixedly, until she reddened and her eyes fell.

“Is the engagement announced, then?”

“I should think so; but I’m not much in the way of hearing fashionable gossip.”

Still Piers regarded her; still her cheeks kept their colour, and her eyes refused to meet his.

“I see I have offended you,” he said quietly.  “I’m very sorry.  Of course I went too far in speaking like that of the life you have chosen.  I had no righ——­”

“Nonsense!  If you mustn’t tell me what you think, who may?”

Again the change was so sudden, this time from coldness to smiling familiarity, that Piers felt embarrassed.

“The fact is,” Olga pursued, with a careless air, “I don’t think I shall go on with this much longer.  If you said what you have in your mind, that I should never be any good as an artist, you would be quite right.  I haven’t had the proper training; it’ll all come to nothing.  And—­talking of engagements—­I daresay you know that mine is broken off?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“It is.  Mr. Kite and I are only friends now.  He’ll look in presently, I think.  I should like you to meet him, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course I shall be very glad.”

“All this, you know,” said Olga, with a laugh, “would be monstrously irregular in decent society, but decent society is often foolish, don’t you think?”

“To be sure it is,” Piers answered genially, “and I never meant to find fault with your preference for a freer way of living.  It is only—­you say I may speak freely—­that I didn’t like to think of your going through needless hardships.”

“You don’t think, then, it has done me good?”

“I am not at all sure of that.”

Olga lay back in her chair, as if idly amused.

“You see,” she said, “how we have both changed.  We are both much more positive, in different directions.  To be sure, it makes conversation more interesting.  But the change is greatest in me.  You always aimed at success in a respectable career.”