“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.  I suppose we can’t get unmarried, can we?” she said with a little quivering laugh.  “But—­but at least we need never be anything more than—­than friends——­”

Jimmy was very white; Christine had spoken so quietly, so decidedly, they were not angry words, not even deliberately chosen to hurt him, they sounded just final!

He caught her hand.

“Oh, my God, you don’t mean that, Christine, you’re just saying it to—­to punish me, just to—­to—­pay me out.  You don’t really mean it—­you don’t mean that you’ve forgotten all the old days, you don’t mean that you don’t care for me any more—­that you never will care for me again.  I can’t bear it.  Oh, for God’s sake say you don’t mean that.”

There was genuine anguish in his voice now, and in his eyes, but Christine was not looking at him, she was only remembering that he had once loved another woman desperately, passionately, and that because that woman was no longer living he wished to transfer his affections; she kept her eyes steadily before her, as she answered him: 

“I am sorry, I don’t want to hurt you, but—­but I am afraid that—­that is what I do mean.”

There was a moment of absolute silence.  She did not look at Jimmy; she was only conscious of the fierce desire in her heart to hurt him, to make him feel, make him suffer as he had once made her suffer in the days that seemed so far away now and dead that she could look back with wonderment at herself for the despair she had known then.