“Mrs. Challoner—­my wife—­is she in?”

The hall porter looked at Jimmy curiously.  He thought he and Christine were the strangest married couple he had ever come across.  There was a little twinkle in his solemn eyes as he answered: 

“Mrs. Challoner went very early, sir.  She asked me to telephone to you at the Savoy at one o’clock and say she was sorry she would not be able to meet you——­”

“Not be able to meet me?” Jimmy’s voice and face were blank.

“That is what Mrs. Challoner said, sir.  She went out with a gentleman,—­a Mr. Kettering, she told me to say, sir.”

Sangster turned sharply away.  For the first time for many weeks he was utterly and profoundly sorry for Jimmy Challoner, as he stood staring at the hall porter with blank eyes.  The eager flush had faded from his face; he looked, all at once, ill and old; he pulled himself together with an effort.

“Oh!  All right—­thanks—­thanks very much.”

His voice sounded dazed.  He turned and went down the steps to the street; but when he reached the pavement he stood still again, as if he hardly knew what he was doing.  When Sangster touched his arm he started violently.

“What is it?  Oh, yes—­I’m coming.”  He began to walk on at such a rate that Sangster could hardly keep pace with him.  He expostulated good-humouredly: 

“What’s the hurry, old chap?  I’m getting old, remember.”

Jimmy slackened speed then.  He looked at his friend with burning eyes.

“I’ll break every bone in that devil’s carcass,” he said furiously.  “I’ll teach him to come dangling after my wife.  I ought to have known that was his little game.  No wonder she won’t go anywhere with me.  It’s Kettering—­damn his impertinence!  I suppose he’s been setting her against me.  He and Horace always thought I was a rotter and an outsider.  I’ll spoil his beauty for him; I’ll——­” His voice had risen excitedly.  A man passing turned to stare curiously.

Sangster slipped a hand through Jimmy’s arm.

“Don’t be so hasty, old chap.  There’s no harm in your wife going out to lunch with Kettering if she wants to.  Give her the benefit of the doubt for the present, at least.”

“She’s chucked me for him.  She promised to meet me.  She thinks more of him than she does of me, or she’d never have gone.”  There was a sort of enraged agony in Jimmy’s voice, a fierce colour burned in his pale face.

Sangster shrugged his shoulders.  It was rather amusing to him that Jimmy should be playing the jealous husband—­Jimmy, whose own life had been so singularly selfish and full of little episodes which no doubt he would prefer to be buried and forgotten.

Jimmy turned on him: 

“You’re pleased, of course.  You’re chuckling up your sleeve.  You think it serves me right—­and I dare say it does; but I can’t bear it, I tell you—­I won’t—­I won’t.”