As for Nick, he turned again to the door with his switch tucked under his arm. "All right," he said. "I accept the amendment."
He was gone with the words, almost as though he feared he had already yielded too far. Probably to no other man would he have yielded a single inch.
The interview had ended in a fashion extremely distasteful to him, yet he entered Olga's presence cheerily, with no sign of discontent.
"Hullo, my chicken! Not riding this morning? Haven't you slept?"
He sat down on the bed with Olga's arms very tightly round his neck, and prepared himself to make the best of a very bad business.
The night before he had soothed her in the midst of her distress with all a mother's tenderness, but by daylight he discarded the maternal rôle and resumed his masculine limitations.
"Come!" he said coaxingly to the fair head pillowed against his shoulder. "You're going to be a sensible kiddie now? You're going to forget all yesterday's nonsense? Max won't say any more if you don't. You've just got to kiss and be friends."
Olga little dreamed that thus cheerily he made his last stand for a hope which he knew to be forlorn.
She raised her head and looked at him with eyes that shone with the brilliance which follows the shedding of many tears. "It's no good ever thinking of that, Nick," she said, speaking quickly and nervously. "I've been awake all night, thinking—thinking. But there's no way out. I can't marry him. I can't even see him again. And, Nick,—I want you, please, to give him back his ring."
"My dear, you're not in earnest!" said Nick.