With impulsive hands she tore off her tumbled muslin dress, and arrayed herself in the flaming evening robe which Olga had once condemned. Olga raised no protest now. She gave her silent assistance. The horrors of that day had so closed in upon her that she felt fantastically convinced that nothing she did or left undone could make any difference, or hinder for the fraction of an instant the fate that so remorselessly pursued them and was surely every moment drawing nearer. The fear at her heart had so wound itself into her very being that she was no longer conscious of it. It possessed her like an evil spell.
So she stood by, sometimes helping, always watching, while her friend's tragedy leaped from point to point like a spreading forest-fire breeding destruction.
"You are not afraid of me, Allegro?" Violet asked her suddenly, as she arranged her black hair with swift, feverish movements.
And Olga answered with truth. "No, dear. I should never be that."
"Not whatever happened? That's right. I'm not really dangerous—so long as you keep Max out of my way. But, mind—I must never see him again, never—never—while I live!" She turned from the glass, facing Olga with eyes in which an awful fire had begun to burn. "I know him!" she said. "I know him! He will want to shut me up—to keep me as a specimen for him—and men like him—to study. He and Bruce will do it between them if they get the chance. But they won't—they won't! Allegro—darling, you must help me to get away. I can't—can't—be imprisoned for life. You will help me? Promise me! Promise!"
"I promise, dearest!" Olga made answer very earnestly.
Something of relief softened the agony in the dark eyes. Very suddenly Violet took her friend's face between her hands and passionately kissed her on the lips.
"I love you, Allegro!" she said. "And I trust you—and you only—till death."
It was then—at first but dimly—that Olga began to realize that the burden laid upon her might be heavier than she could bear, and yet that she alone must bear it even if it crushed her to the earth.
Passing out at length into the passage, she felt Violet's hand close with a convulsive pressure upon her arm, and she knew that here was fear such as she had never before encountered or imagined,—the deadly, unfathomable fear of a mind that hovered on the brink of the abyss.