to be jilted. Is
that enough?"

He spoke with indomitable resolution, but there must have been some
yielding quality in the last words, for she suddenly found strength to
lift her head again and turn her face up to his.

"Max," she said imploringly, "I believe I have wronged you, and I do beg
you to forgive me.--But, Max, there is one thing that--for my peace of
mind--you must tell me. Please, Max, please!"

She set her clasped hands against him, beseeching him with her whole
soul. He looked down into her eyes, and his own were no longer stern but
quite impenetrable. He spoke no word.

"I have always known," she said, faltering a little under his look,
"always felt that there was something--something strange
about--Violet's sudden death. Max, tell me--tell me--she didn't--make
away with herself?"

She uttered the question with a shrinking dread that seemed to run
shuddering through her whole body. And because he did not instantly
reply, her face whitened with a sick suspense.

"Oh, she didn't!" she gasped imploringly. "Say she didn't! I--I think it
would break my heart if--if--if--that--had happened."

"You must remember that she was not responsible for her actions," Max
said.

Olga was trembling all over. "Then she did?"

He avoided the question. "Her life was over," he said, "in any case."

"Then she did?" Again sharply she put the question, as though goaded
thereto by an intolerable pain. "Max," she said, "oh, Max, I could bear
anything better than that! I don't believe it of her! I can't believe
it!"

"But why torture yourself in this way?" he said. "What do you gain by
it?"

"Because I must, I must!" she answered feverishly. "I dream about her
night after night--night after night. My mind is never at rest about
her. She seems to be calling to me, trying to tell me something. And I
never can get to her or hear what it is. It's all because I can't
remember. And sometimes I feel as if I shall go mad myself with trying."

"Olga!" Briefly and sternly he checked her. "You are getting hysterical.
Don't you think there has been enough of this? If you go any further,
you will regret it."

"But I must know!" she said. "Max, was it so? Did she take her own
life?"

"She did not!"

Quietly he answered her, so quietly that for a moment she could hardly
believe that he had given a definite reply. She stared at him
incredulously.

"You are telling me the truth?" she said piteously at length. "You
won't try