t care to run the risk of having to sew me up again. And for
another, you wouldn't dare!"

"Not dare! Do you think I am afraid of you?"

Olga stood in a streak of sunlight that slanted through the wire blind
of the doctor's surgery and fell in chequers upon her white dress. Her
pale eyes fairly blazed. No one who had ever seen her thus would have
described her as colourless. She was as vivid in that moment as the
flare of the sunset; and into the eyes of the man who leaned against the
table coolly appraising her there came an odd little gleam of
satisfaction--the gleam that comes into the eyes of the treasure-hunter
at the first glint of gold.

Olga came a step towards him. She saw the gleam and took it for
ridicule. The situation was intolerable. She would be mocked no longer.

"Dr. Wyndham," she said, her voice pitched rather low, "do you call
yourself a gentleman?"

"I really don't know," he answered. "It's a question I've never asked
myself."

"Because," she said, speaking rather quickly, "I think you a cad."

"Not really!" said Max, smiling openly. "Now I wonder why! Sit down,
won't you, and tell me?"

The colour was fading from her face again. She had made a mistake in
thus assailing him, and already she knew it. He only laughed at her puny
efforts to hurt him, laughed and goaded her afresh.

"Why am I not a gentleman?" he asked, and drew in a mouthful of smoke
which he puffed at the ceiling. "Because I said I should like to give
you a whipping? But you would like to tar and feather me, I gather.
Isn't that even more barbarous?" He watched the smoke ascend, with eyes
screwed up, then, as she did not speak, looked down at her again.

She no longer stood in the sunlight, and the passing of the splendour
seemed to have left her cold. She looked rather small and pinched--there
was even a hint of forlornness about her. But she had learned her
lesson.

As he looked at her, she clenched her hands, drew a deep breath, and
spoke. "Dr. Wyndham, I beg your pardon for hurting you, and for being
rude to you. I can't help my thoughts, of course, but I was wrong to put
them into words. Please forget--all I've said!"

"Oh, I say!" said Max, opening his eyes, "that's the cruellest thing
you've done yet. You've taken all the wind out of my sails, and left me
stranded. What is one expected to say to an apology of that sort? It's
outside my experience entirely."

Olga had turned to the door, but at his words she pause