"

"Oh!" She looked disappointed. "Is there--isn't there anyone else we
can ask?"

His eyes searched her flushed face bitterly.

"You hate being alone with me as much as all that?"

She looked away.

"I only thought it would be more lively."

"You find me such dull company."

She made no reply.

"Things have changed since we were engaged, haven't they?" said Jimmy
then, savagely. "You were pleased enough to be with me then; you never
wanted a third."

"Things are reversed--that is all," she told him unemotionally.

He laughed ironically.

"I don't think you know quite how successfully you are paying me out,"
he said.

"I would rather not talk about it," she interrupted. "It can do no
good. I have done as you asked me; I told you I could do no more, that
you must expect nothing more."

There was a little silence.

"I'm sorry," said Jimmy stiltedly.

They lunched together.

"I'll get some tickets for a theatre to-night," Jimmy said. "That will
kill the time, won't it?"

"I didn't say I found the time drag," she told him.

"No; but you look bored to death," he answered savagely.

It was such an extraordinary situation--that Christine should ever be
bored with him. It cut Jimmy to the heart; he looked at her with anger.

She was leaning back in her chair, looking round the room. She was as
little interested in him as he had once been in her.

Twenty times during the day he cursed himself for the mad infatuation
that had wrecked his happiness. There was something so sweet and
desirable about Christine. He would have given his soul just then for
one of her old radiant smiles; for just a glimpse of the light in her
eyes which had always been there when she looked at him; for the note
of shy happiness in her voice when she spoke to him.

The days of delirium which he had spent with Cynthia Farrow seemed like
an impossible dream now, when he looked back on them: the late nights
and champagne suppers, the glare of the footlights, the glamour and
grease paint of the theatre. His soul sickened at the thought of the
unnatural life he had led then. All he wanted now was quiet
happiness--the life of domesticity for which he had once pitied
himself, believing it would be his lot as Christine's husband, seemed
the most desirable thing on earth; just he and she--perhaps down in the
country--walking through fields and woods, perhaps at Upton House, with
the crowd of old memories to draw them toget