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 cha