"Now see what you can do." It seemed to Olga later that he took so keen an interest in the operation as to be quite insensible of the pain it involved.

She obeyed his instructions herself with a set face and a quaking heart, suppressing a sick shudder from time to time, finally achieving the desired end with a face so ghastly that the victim of her efforts laughed outright.
"Whom are you most sorry for, yourself or me ?" he wanted to know.

"I say, please don't faint till you have bandaged me up! I can't attend to you properly if you do, and I shall probably spill blood over you and make a beastly mess." Again his insistence carried the day.

Olga bandaged the torn hand without a murmur.
"And now," said Dr.Max Wyndham, "tell me what you did it for!" She looked at him then with quick defiance.

She had endured much in silence, mainly because she had known that she had deserved it; but there was a limit.