own existence, it had awakened to life and responded to his. To make
her mental subjection the more complete, he had in his simplicity
peered like a child through all her disguises and painted her soul as
he saw it--as it was. The flattery was the more effectual because of
its subtlety and because she knew, as he did, that in it there was no
guile, no self-interest or sentimentality. And in return she could
have paid him no higher compliment than when coolly, almost coldly,
she told him of her life and what she had made of it.

She was very winning to-night--very gentle and womanly--more English
than French or Russian, more American than either. Neither of them
spoke for a long while. Such words as they could speak would have
taken something from the perfection of their background. But Markham
thought of her as he had frequently done, thankful again for the
benefits of her regard, the genuineness of which she had brought home
to him in many material ways.

To Olga alone there was a peril in the silence, a peril for the sanity
he had taught her, for the pact which she had made with herself. She
had eaten the bread and salt of his friendship and had given him hers.
He believed in her and she could not deceive him. She knew his nature
well. She had not been a student of men all her life for nothing. It
would have been so easy to lie to him, to befuddle and bewitch him, to
bring him to her feet by unfair means. But she had scorned to use
them. For her, John Markham had been taboo. But there was peril in
the silence. She sat looking into the wake of the moon in the water,
very quiet, tense and almost breathless.

"You're glad you came?" she asked at last in the tones of matter and
fact.