"Don't be foolish, Olga," he whispered. "You know that can't mean you."
"I don't know," she murmured wistfully in a low, even voice, her gaze on the andirons. "You've surely given me no reasons t believe that you cared for my society. I wrote you twice from New York, once form Paris and once from Trouville, and you've only deigned me one reply—such a reply—with comments upon the weather (upon which I was fully informed), and a hope that we might meet in October in New York. It was sweet of you, John, when I came to Europe expressly to see you!"
"Me?" He rose, walked the length of the room and glanced anxiously out of the window. "Impossible!" he said, then turned and stood by the mantel, his back toward the door, his voice tensely subdued. "See here, Olga, don't you think it's about time that you stopped making fun of me—that you and I understood each other? For some reason, after a few years of acquaintance you've suddenly discovered that I amuse you. Why, I don't know. I'm not your sort—not the sort of man you'd find worth your while in the long run, and you know it. And I don't propose to be caught in your silken mesh, my dear, to be left to dry in the sun when you find some other specimen more to your liking."
Olga laughed silently, her head away from him, and Markham, after a quick glance over his shoulder, went on whispering.
"I gave you my friendship-freely, unreservedly, but you weren't satisfied with that. Hardly! You wanted me to be in love with you. There's no doubt of it." He laughed. "Oh, anyone else would have done as well, but I happened along at a favorable time—on the back swing of the pendulum. It hurt your pride, I think, that one of my Arcadian simplicity should fail to droop where others, more sophisticated, had fallen swiftly. Perhaps I, too, might have fallen if you hadn't warned me that you had no heart. You did me that kindness."
He stopped, listening. Olga's ears, too, were alert for a sound—a tiny sound of no more volume than that which might have been made by a mouse that had come from overhead.
"But you grew weary of that," he went on quietly. "You wanted something to happen. Your reputation was at stake. It was time for a psychological crisis of sorts—and so you arranged it—in a rose garden."
Olga had stopped smiling now and her brows were narrowing painfully.
"You have no right to speak to me so," she murmured.
"It's true," he finished. "You didn't play fair and you know it."
She bent forward, her elbows on her knees, her gaze on the ashes.