Give me the right to protect you! I promise to use it with discretion." He smiled very slightly with the words; but Olga only gazed at him uncomprehendingly.
"How?
I don't know what you mean." He held out his hand to her abruptly.

"Don't faint!" he said.

"Let me tell him--as a dead secret--that you are engaged to me!" Olga gasped.
Max got up.

"Only as a temporary expedient," he said.

"I'll let you go again--when you wish it." His hand remained outstretched, and after a very considerable pause she laid hers within it.
"But really," she said, with an effort, "I don't think we need do anything so desperate as that." "A desperate case requires a desperate remedy sometimes," said Max, with a humorous twinkle in his eyes "It doesn't mean anything, but we must floor this rascal somehow.