Olga rose with a shiver.
"What's the matter ?" said Nick.
To which she answered, "Nothing," knowing that he would not believe her, knowing also that he would understand enough to ask no more.
She went to the piano, put aside the mandolin, and began to play.

Not even to Nick, her hero and her close confidant, would she explain the absolute repugnance that the association of Max Wyndham with her friend had inspired in her.
But though she played with apparent absorption, her ears were strained to catch the sound of their voices in the garden behind her, the girl's light chatter, her companion's brief, cynical laugh.

For she knew by the sure intuition which is a woman's inner and unerring vision, that jest or trifle as he might his keen brain was actively employed in some subtle investigation too obscure for her to fathom, and that behind his badinage and behind his cynicism there sat a man who watched..