bed with the shock of it all; he
listened like a man in a dream to the details they told him. It passed
him by unmoved that she had been in Mortlake's car when the accident
occurred; it had conveyed nothing to his mind when they told him that
the only words she had spoken during her brief flash of consciousness
had been to ask for him.

As he stood there in the familiar scented pink drawing-room, his
thoughts had flown with odd incongruity to Christine.

She would be kind to him--she would be sorry for him; his whole heart
and soul had been on fire to get back to her--to get away from the
harrowing silence of the flat which had always been associated in his
mind with fun and laughter, and the happiest days of his life.

A fur coat of Cynthia's lay across a chair-back; so many times he had
helped her slip into it after her performance at the theatre was ended.
He knew so well the faint scent that always clung to it; he shuddered
and averted his eyes. She would never wear it again; she was dead! He
wondered what would become of it--what would become of all her clothes,
and her jewelry and her trinkets.

Suddenly, in the middle of more details, he had turned and rushed
blindly away. It was not so much grief as a sort of horror at himself
that drove him; he felt as if someone had forced him to look on a past
folly--a folly of which he was now ashamed.

He had thought of Christine with a sort of passionate thankfulness and
gratitude; and now there was nothing but dislike and contempt for him
in her brown eyes. Somehow she seemed like a different woman to the
one whom he had so lightly wooed and won such a little while ago. She
looked older--wiser; the childishness of her face seemed to have
hardened; it was no longer the little girl Christine who faced him in
the silent room.

He broke out again urgently:

"Don't be absurd, Christine. I won't have it, I tell you, I forbid you
to leave the hotel. After all, you're my wife--you must do as I wish."
She seemed not to hear him; she stood with her eyes fixed straight in
front of her.

"Please let me go."

"Where are you going? You're my wife--you'll have to stay with me."
His hand was on the door handle now; he was looking down at her with
haggard eyes in his white face.

"Let's begin all over again, Christine. I've been a rotter, I know;
but if you'll have a little patience--it's not too late--we can patch
things up, and--and I'll promise you----"

She cu