uffered! I have longed for this
moment. Will you say--that you forgive me?"

"My dear Mrs. Florio"--Piers began with good-natured expostulation, a
sort of forced bluffness; but she would not hear him.

"Not that name! Not from _you_. There's no harm; you won't--you can't
misunderstand me, such old friends as we are. I want you to call me by
my own name, and to make me feel that we are friends still--that you
can really forgive me."

"There is nothing in the world to forgive," he insisted, in the same
tone. "Of course we are friends! How could we be anything else?"

"I behaved infamously to you! I can't think how I had the heart to do
it!"

Piers was tortured with nervousness. Had her voice and manner declared
insincerity, posing, anything of that kind, he would have found the
situation much more endurable; but Olga had tears in her eyes, and not
the tears of an actress; her tones had recovered something of their old
quality, and reminded him painfully of the time when Mrs. Hannaford was
dying. She held a hand to him, her pale face besought his compassion.

"Come now, let us talk in the old way, as you wish," he said, just
pressing her fingers. "Of course I felt it--but then I was myself
altogether to blame. I importuned you for what you couldn't give.
Remembering that, wasn't your action the most sensible, and really the
kindest?"

"I don't know," Olga murmured, in a voice just audible.

"Of course it was! There now, we've done with all that. Tell me more
about your life this last year or two. You are such a brilliant person.
I felt rather overcome----"

"Nonsense!" But Olga brightened a little. "What of your own brilliancy?
I read somewhere that you are a famous man in Russia----"

Piers laughed, spontaneously this time, and, finding it a way of
escape, gossiped about his own achievements with mirthful exaggeration.

"Do you see the Derwents?" Mrs. Florio asked of a sudden, with a
sidelong look.

So vexed was Otway at the embarrassment he could not wholly hide, and
which delayed his answer, that he spoke the truth with excessive
bluntness.

"I have met Miss Derwent in society."

"I don't often see them," said Olga, in a tone of weariness. "I suppose
we belong to different worlds."

At the earliest possible moment, Piers rose with decision. He felt that
he had not pleased Mrs. Florio, that perhaps he had offended her, and
in leaving her he tried to atone for involuntary unkindness.

"But we shall se