"But I can't wait," she said. "It--it is like a dreadful wound, Nick. I want to bind it up quick--quick, before it gets any worse,--to hide it,--to try and forget it's there. I can't--I daren't--keep it open. I think it would kill me." There was actual agony in her voice, and Nick saw that he had made his last stand in vain. Yet not instantly did he abandon it. Once more he thrust past her defences, though she sought so desperately to keep him out. "It's not for us to judge each other, is it?" he said. "Be merciful, Olga! Don't you think there may have been--extenuating circumstances?" She looked at him with quivering lips, and dumbly shook her head. "Listen!" he said. "When Muriel and I were flying from Wara, I killed a man with my hands under her eyes. It was a ghastly business. I did it to save her life and my own. But--like you--she didn't look at the motive--only at the deed. And in consequence I became a thing abhorrent in her sight. She didn't get over it for a long time. But she forgave me at last. Can't you be equally generous? Or don't you love him well enough?" Olga's hands clasped one another very tightly. She answered him under her breath. "I expect that's it, Nick, I don't love him any more at all. It has killed my love." "Then you never loved him," said Nick with conviction. She made no attempt to contradict him. Only her strained white face seemed to implore him to torture her no further. He saw it, and his heart smote him. "I hate to hurt you, my chicken," he said. "But, dear, you're making such a hideous muddle of your life. I hate that even worse." She flung her arms about his neck; she pressed her lips to his yellow face. "Darling Nick, never mind about me, never mind!" she whispered. "I am doing simply what I must do. I can scarcely think or feel yet. Only I know that I must get free. It isn't that I'm hard. It's just that I have no choice. Your case was different. You had to do it. But this--" her words sank, became scarcely audible--"Nick, could anything extenuate--this?" "God knows," said Nick. He paused a moment, then added: "I sometimes think, if the whole truth were known, there would be an extenuating circumstance for every mortal offence under the sun." She did not argue the point. She seemed beyond argument. "Very likely," she said. "But really I have no choice. You see, we were such friends--such friends. And then she loved him, while he--he had nothing but a professional interest for her, till he found her case to be hopeless, and then he lost even that. That's what made it so horrible--so impossible. If he had loved her--even a little--I could have understood. But as it was--Oh, Nick, don't you see?" Yes, he did see. It was useless to reason with her. She was like a captive bird beating wild wings for freedom and wholly unable to gauge its awful desolation when won. For the second time he had to own himself beaten. For the second time he withdrew his forces from the field.