She raised her eyes at once and smiled. "You must think me very foolish," she said.
"No, I don't," he rejoined bluntly. "That brute is enough to scare any woman. You hate him, don't you?"
There was insistence in his tone, insistence mingled with a touch of anxiety. But Olga did not answer him.
"Don't let us talk about him!" she said, with a shiver she could not repress.
Noel's mouth hardened a little. "I'm very sorry," he said. "But we must. He's been circulating a lot of lies about—Max." He paused an instant, looking straight down at her. "Max is a good chap, you know," he said. "It's up to me to defend him."
Olga's face quivered, but she kept her eyes lifted. "You can't," she said, her voice very low.
"Can't I, though?" Hotly he threw back the words. "You don't mean to say you believe it?"
"I know it is true," she said.
"My dear Olga,—" he began.
But she checked him, her hand upon his arm. "Noel," she said, "truly I can't talk about this. But that story is—true, in part at least. Max admitted it—himself—to me."