liged to obey. The shrewd green eyes watched her
mercilessly, and under their unswerving regard her agitation gradually
died down.

"That's better," he said at length, and released her hand. "Now see what
you can do."

It seemed to Olga later that he took so keen an interest in the
operation as to be quite insensible of the pain it involved. She obeyed
his instructions herself with a set face and a quaking heart,
suppressing a sick shudder from time to time, finally achieving the
desired end with a face so ghastly that the victim of her efforts
laughed outright.

"Whom are you most sorry for, yourself or me?" he wanted to know. "I
say, please don't faint till you have bandaged me up! I can't attend to
you properly if you do, and I shall probably spill blood over you and
make a beastly mess."

Again his insistence carried the day. Olga bandaged the torn hand
without a murmur.

"And now," said Dr. Max Wyndham, "tell me what you did it for!"

She looked at him then with quick defiance. She had endured much in
silence, mainly because she had known that she had deserved it; but
there was a limit. She was not going to be brought to book as though she
had been a naughty child.

"You had yourself alone to thank for it," she declared with indignation.
"If--if you hadn't interfered and behaved intolerably, it wouldn't have
happened."

"What a naive way of expressing it!" said Max. "Shall I tell you how I
regard the 'happening'?"

"You can do as you like," she flung back. She was longing to go, but
stood her ground lest departure should look like flight.

Max took out and lighted another cigarette before he spoke again. Then:
"I regard it," he said very deliberately, "as a piece of spiteful
mischief for which you deserve a sound whipping--which it would give me
immense pleasure to administer."

Olga's pale face flamed scarlet. Her eyes flashed up to his in fiery
disdain.

"You!" she said, with withering scorn. "You!"

"Well, what about me?"

Carelessly, his hands in his pockets, Max put the question. Quite
obviously he did not care in the smallest degree what answer she made.
And so Olga, being stung to rage by his unbearable superiority, cast
scruples to the wind.

"I'd do the same to you again--and worse," she declared vindictively,
"if I got the chance!"

Max smiled at that superciliously, one corner of his mouth slightly
higher than the other. "Oh, no, you wouldn't," he said. "For one thing,
you wouldn'