Olga turned a vivid scarlet. "I am Miss Ratcliffe to you," she said.
He accepted the rebuff with unimpaired equanimity. "I thought it must be too good to be true. Pardon my presumption! When you are as old as I am you will realize how little it really matters. You are genuinely angry, I suppose? Not pretending?"
Olga bit her lip in silence and returned to her work, conscious of unsteady fingers, conscious also of a scrutiny that marked and derided the fact.
"Yes," he said, after a moment, "I should think your pulse must be about a hundred. Leave off working for a minute and let it steady down!"
Olga stitched on in spite of growing discomfiture. The shakiness was increasing very perceptibly. She could feel herself becoming hotter every moment. It was maddening to feel those ironical eyes noting and ridiculing her agitation. From exasperation she had passed to something very nearly resembling fury.
"Leave off!" he said again; and then, because she would not, he laid a detaining hand upon her work.
Instantly and fiercely her needle stabbed downwards. It was done in a moment, almost before she realized the nature of the impulse that possessed her. Straight into the back of his hand the weapon drove, and there from the sheer force of the impact broke off short.
Olga exclaimed in horror, but Max Wyndham made no sound of any sort. The cigarette remained between his lips, and not a muscle of his face moved. His hand with the broken needle in it was not withdrawn. It clenched slowly, that was all.
The blood welled up under Olga's dismayed eyes, and began to trickle over the brown fist. She threw a frightened glance into his grim face. Her anger had wholly evaporated and she was keenly remorseful. But it was no matter for an apology. The thing was beyond words.
"And now," said Max Wyndham, coolly removing the ash from his cigarette, "perhaps you will come to the surgery with me and get it out."
"I?" stammered Olga, turning very white.
"Even so, fair lady. It will be a little lesson for you—in surgery. I hope the sight of blood doesn't make you feel green," said Max, with a one-sided twitch of the lips that was scarcely a smile.
He removed his hand to her relief, and stood up. Olga stood up too, but she was trembling all over.
"Oh, I can't! Indeed, I can't! Dr. Wyndham, please!" She glanced round desperately. "There's Nick! Couldn't you ask him?"
"Unfortunately this is a job that requires two hands," said Max.
"Besides, you did the mischief, remember."
Olga gasped and said no more. Meekly she laid her work on the chair by the hammock and accompanied him to the house. It was the most painful predicament she had ever been in. She knew that there was no escape for her, knew, moreover, that she richly deserved her punishment; yet, as he held open the surgery-door for her, she made one more appeal.
"I'm sure I can't do it. I shall do more harm than good, and hurt you horribly."
"Oh, but you'll enjoy that," he said.
"Indeed, I shan't!" Olga was almost in tears by this time. "Couldn't you do it yourself with—with a forceps?"
"Afraid not," said Max.
He went to a cupboard and took out a bottle containing something which he measured into a glass and filled up with water.
"Fortify yourself with this," he said, handing it to her, "while I select the instruments of torture."
Olga shuddered visibly. "I don't want it. I only want to go."
"Well, you can't go," he returned, "until you have extracted that bit of needle of yours. So drink that, and be sensible!"
He pulled out a drawer with the words, and she watched him, fascinated, as he made his selection. He glanced up after a moment.
"Olga, if you don't swallow that stuff soon, I shall be—annoyed with you."
She raised it at once to her lips, feeling as if she had no choice, and drank with shuddering distaste.
"I always have hated sal volatile," she said, as she finished the draught.
"You can't have everything you like in this world," returned Max sententiously. "Come over here by the window! Now you are to do exactly what I tell you. Understand? Put your own judgment in abeyance. Yes, I know it's bleeding; but you needn't shudder like that. Give me your hand!" She gave it, trembling. He held it firmly, looking straight into her quivering face. "We won't proceed," he said, "until you have quite recovered your self-control, or you may go and slit a large vein, which would be awkward for us both. Just stand still and pull yourself together."
She found herself obliged to obey. The shrewd green eyes watched her mercilessly, and under their unswerving regard her agitation gradually died down.
"That's better," he said at length, and released her hand. "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. She was not going to be brought to book as though she had been a naughty child.
"You had yourself alone to thank for it," she declared with indignation. "If—if you hadn't interfered and behaved intolerably, it wouldn't have happened."
"What a naïve way of expressing it!" said Max. "Shall I tell you how I regard the 'happening'?"
"You can do as you like," she flung back. She was longing to go, but stood her ground lest departure should look like flight.
Max took out and lighted another cigarette before he spoke again. Then: "I regard it," he said very deliberately, "as a piece of spiteful mischief for which you deserve a sound whipping—which it would give me immense pleasure to administer."
Olga's pale face flamed scarlet. Her eyes flashed up to his in fiery disdain.
"You!" she said, with withering scorn. "You!"
"Well, what about me?"
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