Carelessly, his hands in his pockets, Max put the question. Quite
obviously he did not care in the smallest degree what answer she made.
And so Olga, being stung to rage by his unbearable superiority, cast
scruples to the wind.

"I'd do the same to you again--and worse," she declared vindictively,
"if I got the chance!"

Max smiled at that superciliously, one corner of his mouth slightly
higher than the other. "Oh, no, you wouldn't," he said. "For one thing,
you wouldn't care to run the risk of having to sew me up again. And for
another, you wouldn't dare!"

"Not dare! Do you think I am afraid of you?"

Olga stood in a streak of sunlight that slanted through the wire blind
of the doctor's surgery and fell in chequers upon her white dress. Her
pale eyes fairly blazed. No one who had ever seen her thus would have
described her as colourless. She was as vivid in that moment as the
flare of the sunset; and into the eyes of the man who leaned against the
table coolly appraising her there came an odd little gleam of
satisfaction--the gleam that comes into the eyes of the treasure-hunter
at the first glint of gold.

Olga came a step towards him. She saw the gleam and took it for
ridicule. The situation was intolerable. She would be mocked no longer.

"Dr. Wyndham," she said, her voice pitched rather low, "do you call
yourself a gentleman?"