"Nor mine—" finished Olga quietly, "you needn't go on." The calmness of her tone only brought its bitterness into higher relief. Markham stopped, turned and caught both her hands in his.
"No, not yours, Olga. God knows I didn't mean that. You're not their kind, soulless, cynical, selfish and narrow social parasite who poison what they fee don and live in the idleness that better men and women have bought for them. Call them your crowd if you like. I know better. You've only taken people as you've found them—taken life as it was planned for you—moved along the line of least resistance because you'd never been taught that there was any other way to go. In Europe you never had a chance to learn—"
"That's it," she broke in passionately, "I never had a chance—not a chance."
Her fingers clutched his and then quickly released them.
"Oh, what's the use?" she went on in a stifled tone. "Why couldn't you have let me live on, steeped in my folly? It's too late for me to change. I can't. I'm pledged. If I gamble, keep late hours, and do all the things that this set does it's because if I didn't I should die of thinking. What does it matter to any one but me?"
She stopped and rose with a sudden gesture of anger.
"Don't preach, John. I'm not in the humor for it—not to-night—do you hear?"
He looked up at her in surprise. One of her hands was clenched on the balustrade and her dark eyes regarded him scornfully.
"I've made you angry? I'm sorry," he said.
The tense lines of her figure suddenly relaxed as she leaned against the pergola and then laughed up at the sky.