For a moment she hesitated, and his heart-beats quickened a little, hoping she would agree to the suggestion; but the next moment she shook her head.

“I don’t care to—­thank you.  I will go back to the hotel.”

Jimmy hailed a taxi.  He looked moody and despondent once more.  They drove away in silence.

Presently—­

“I will go to your rooms if—­if you will answer me one thing,” said Christine abruptly.

Jimmy stared.  The colour ran into his pale face.

“I will answer anything you like to ask me—­you know I will.”

“Did—­did Miss Farrow ever go to your rooms?”

She asked the question tremblingly; she could not look at him.  With a sudden movement Jimmy dropped his face in his hands; the hot blood seemed to scorch him; this sudden mention of a name he had never wished to hear again was almost unbearable.

“Yes,” he said; “she did.”  He looked up.  “Christine—­don’t condemn me like that,” he broke out agitatedly.  He saw the cold disdain in her averted face.

“She lived such a different life from anything you can possibly imagine.  It’s—­well—­it’s like being in another world.  Women on the stage think nothing of—­of—­the free-and-easy sort of thing.  She used to come to my rooms to tea.  She used to bring her friends in after the theatre—­after rehearsals.”  He leaned over as if to take her hand, then drew his own away again.  “I—­I ask you to come now because—­because I thought you would take away all the memories I want to forget.  Can’t you ever forget too?  Can’t you ever try and forgive me?  It’s—­it’s—­awful to think that we may have to live together all our lives and that you’ll never look at me again as you used to—­never be glad to see me, never want me to touch you.”  His voice broke; he bit his lip till it bled.

Christine clasped her hands hard in her lap.

“It was awful to me too—­once,” she said dully.  “Awful to know that you didn’t love me when I was so sure that you did.  But I’ve got over it.  I suppose you will too, some day, even if you think it hurts very much just now.  I dare say we shall be quite happy together in our own way some day.  Lots of married people are—­quite happy together, and don’t love each other at all.”

She dismissed him when they reached the hotel.  She went up to her room and cried.

She did not know why she was crying; she only knew that she felt lonely and unhappy.  She would have given the world just then for someone to come in and put kind arms round her.  She would have given the world to know that there was someone to whom she really mattered, really counted.

Jimmy only wanted her because he realised that she no longer wanted him.  The wedding ring of which she had been so proud was now an unwelcome fetter of which she would never again be free.

They went to the theatre in the evening.  Jimmy had take great pains to make himself smart; it was almost pathetic the efforts he made to be bright and entertaining.  He told her that he had sent a note to Sangster to meet them afterwards for supper.  It gave him a sharp pang of jealousy to notice how Christine’s eyes brightened.