Christine sat up.  “Do you! oh, how lovely!  I should love to go!  Jimmy, do you—­do you know any people on the stage—­actors and actresses?”

“I know some—­yes.  I know quite a lot.”

“Not Miss Farrow, I suppose?” she questioned eagerly.

“Yes—­yes, I do,” said Challoner.

She gave a little cry of delight.  “Oh, I wish I could meet her—­she’s so beautiful.”

Challoner could not answer.  He would have given worlds had it been possible to stop the cab and rush away; but he knew he had got to go through with it now, and presently he found himself following Mrs. Wyatt and Christine through the hall of the hotel at which they were staying.

“It’s quite like old times, isn’t it?” he said with an effort.  “Quite like the dear old days at Upton House.  Don’t I wish we could have them again.”

“The house is still there,” said Mrs. Wyatt laughing.  “Perhaps you will come down again some day.”

Challoner did not think it likely.  There would be something very painful in going back to the scene of those days, he thought.  He was so much changed from the light-hearted youngster who had chased Christine round the garden and pulled her hair because she would not kiss him.

He looked at her with reminiscent eyes.  There was a little flush in her pale cheeks.  She looked more like the child-sweetheart he had so nearly forgotten.

Mrs. Wyatt had moved away.  He and Christine were alone.  “I used to kiss you in those days, didn’t I?” he asked, looking at her.  He felt miserable and reckless.

She looked up at him with serious eyes.  “Yes,” she said almost inaudibly.

Something in her face stirred an old emotion in Jimmy Challoner’s heart.  This girl had been his first love, and a man never really forgets his first love; he leaned nearer to her.

“Christine, do you—­do you wish we could have those days over again?” he asked.

A little quiver crossed her face.  For a moment the beautiful brown eyes lit up radiantly.  For a moment she was something better than just merely pretty.

He waited eagerly for her answer.  His pride, if nothing deeper, had been seriously wounded that night.  The tremulous happiness in this girl’s face was like a gentle touch on a hurt.

“Do you—­do you wish it?” he asked again.

“Yes,” said Christine softly.  “Yes, if you do.”

CHAPTER II

Jilted!

It was late when Jimmy got home to his rooms; he was horribly tired, and his head ached vilely, but he never slept a wink all night.

The fact that Cynthia’s husband was alive did not hurt him nearly so much as the fact that Cynthia had avoided him that evening and left the theatre with Mortlake.  Jimmy hated Mortlake.  The brute had such piles of money, whilst he—­even the insufficient income which was always mortgaged weeks before the quarterly cheque fell due, only came to him from his brother.  At any moment the Great Horatio might cut up rough and stop supplies.