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 together again, and wipe the hard bitterness from little Christine’s brown eyes.

It was pouring with rain when they left the restaurant; the bright sunshine of morning had utterly gone, the street was dripping, the pavements saturated.

“We shall have to go home, I suppose,” said Jimmy lugubriously.

“Home?” Christine looked up at him.  “Do you mean to the hotel?” she asked.

“I suppose so, unless you would care to come to my rooms,” said Jimmy, flushing a little.  “There’s sure to be a fire there, and—­and it’s pretty comfortable.”