"Well?" he said.
Only the one word; but somehow, inexplicably, her heart cried shame upon her, as though she had put a good weapon to an unworthy use. She stood before him, trying vainly to drive it home. But she could not. Further words failed her.
"I see," he said at last. "You think out of my love for you I ought to be willing to give you up. Is that it?"
She nodded mutely, not daring to look at him, still overwhelmed with that shamed sense of doing him a wrong.
"I see," he said again. "And—if it would be for your happiness to let you go—I might perhaps be equal to the sacrifice." His voice was suddenly cynical, and she never guessed that he cloaked an unwanted emotion therewith. "But take the other view of the case. You know you would never be happy away from me."
"I couldn't be happy with you—now," she murmured.
He bent slightly towards her as if not sure that he had heard aright.
"Do you really mean that?" he asked.
She was silent.
"Olga!" he said insistently.
Against her will she raised her eyes, and met his close scrutiny. Against her will she answered him, breathlessly, out of a fevered sense of expediency. "Yes—yes, I do mean it! Oh, Max, you must—you must let me go!"