re
where it is--any place will do."

She spoke hurriedly, as if she wished the conversation ended.

Jimmy looked at her wistfully, she was so pretty, much prettier than
ever he had realised, he told himself with a sense of loss. A thousand
times lately he found himself wishing that Cynthia Farrow had not died;
not that he wanted her any more for himself, not that it any longer
made him suffer to think of her and those first mad days of his
engagement, but so that he might have proved to Christine that the fact
of her being in London and near to him affected him not at all, that he
might prove his infatuation for her to be a thing dead and done with.

Now he supposed she would never believe him. He looked at her pretty
profile, and with sudden impulse he rose to his feet and crossed over
to sit beside her.

"I want to speak to you," he said, when she made a little movement as
if to escape him. "No, I'm not going to touch you."

There was a note of bitterness in his voice, once she had loved him to
be near her--a few short weeks ago--and she would have welcomed this
journey with him alone, but now things were so utterly changed.

"I must speak to you, just once, about Cynthia," he said urgently.
"Just this once, and then I'll never mention her again. I can't hope
that you'll believe what I'm going to say, but--but I do beg of you to
try and believe that I am not saying all this because--because
she--she's dead. If she had lived it would make no difference to me
now; if she were alive at this moment she would be no more to me
than--than any other woman in the world."

Christine kept her eyes steadily before her; she listened because she
could not help herself, but she felt as if someone were turning a knife
in her heart.

"The night--the night she died," Jimmy went on disconnectedly, "I was
going to make a clean breast of--of everything to you, and ask you to
forgive me and let us start again. I was, 'pon my honour I was,
but--but Fate stepped in, I suppose, and you know what happened. When
I married you I'll admit that--that I didn't care for you as much
as--as much as I ought to have done, but now----"

"But now"--Christine interrupted steadily though she was driven by
intolerable pain--"now it's too late. I'm not with you to-night for
any reason except that--that I think it's my duty, and because I don't
want your brother to know or to blame you. We--we can't ever be
anything--except ordinary friends