“Well,” she went on, “aren’t you surprised to see me?”

He bent his head.

“Can you guess why I have come?”

He shook his head.

She looked a little distressed at this.  “Then perhaps I’ve made a mistake in coming.”

At this he spoke for the first time.  “I should say that the chances were that you had,” he said, and his tone was not agreeable.

The edge of his words seemed to give her back all her confidence.  “Now, how strange that you should not know why I’m here!  I’ve come, of course, to return your pearls.”  He saw now, between the laces of her summer dress that she was wearing them.  “In common honesty I could hardly keep them.”  She put up her hands to the clasp, but it did not yield at once to her touch, and she looked up at him.  “I think you’ll have to undo it for me,” she murmured, with bent head.

“I don’t want them,” he answered, with temper.  “I never want to see them again.”

“Nor me, either, perhaps?”

“Nor you either—­perhaps.”

She rose and approached him.  “I’ll keep them on one condition, Max—­that you take permanent charge of both of us.”  Then seeing that she had produced no change in his expression, she came very close indeed.  “There’s no use in looking like a stone image, Max.  It won’t save you.”

“Save me!  And what is my danger?”

“I’m your danger, my dear.”

“Not any longer, Christine.”

“You mean you don’t love me any more?”

“Not a bit.”

At this she shifted her ground with admirable ease.

“In that case,” she said cheerfully, “we can talk the whole subject over quite dispassionately.”

“Quite, if there were anything to talk over.”

“Only first,” she said, “aren’t you going to ask me to stay to dinner?  It’s very late, you know—­”

“I don’t dine here,” he answered, “and I doubt if you would eat very much at the restaurant where I take my meals.”

“Well, would you mind my going into the kitchen and making myself a cup of tea?”

He gave his consent, but evinced no intention of accompanying her.  To see her like this, in his own home, where he had so often imagined her being and where she would never be again, was torture to him.

After an interval that seemed to him an eternity, she came back flushed and triumphant, carrying a tray on which were tea, toast and scrambled eggs.

“There,” she said, “don’t you think I’ve improved?  Don’t you think I’m rather a good housewife?”

The element of pathos in her self-satisfaction was too much for him.  “I’m afraid I’m not in the mood either for comedy or for supper,” he said.

Her face fell.  “I thought you’d be so hungry,” she observed gently.  “But no matter.  Sit down and we’ll talk.”

“I know of nothing to talk about,” he returned, but he dropped reluctantly into a hard, stiff chair opposite her.