She raised her eyes, she shrugged her slim shoulders.

“They are always saying something!  What is it now?”

But her voice was not so indifferent as she would have had it; her eyes were anxious.

“They are saying that you are engaged to Mortlake.”

Jimmy’s eyes never left her face; it was a tragic moment for him.  Cynthia’s white hands clasped each other nervously.

“Are they?” she said.  “How—­how very amusing.”

Her eyes had fallen now; he could only see the outline of darkened lashes against her cheek.

He waited a moment, then he strode forward—­he covered the space between them in a stride; he put a hand beneath her chin, forcing her to look at him.

“Is it true?” he asked.  “Is it true?”

His voice was strangled; his breath came tearing from between clenched teeth.

Cynthia shivered away from him, back against the pile of silken cushions behind her.

“Don’t hurt me, Jimmy; don’t hurt me,” she whimpered.

He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Is it true—­is it true?”

For a moment he thought she was going to refuse to answer; then suddenly she dragged herself free.  She started up, and stood facing him pantingly.

“Yes,” she said defiantly. “Yes, it is true.”

And then the silence fell again, long and unbroken.

It seemed an eternity to Jimmy Challoner; an eternity during which he stood there like a man in a dream, staring at her flushed face.

The world had surely come crashing about him in ruins; for the moment, at least, he was blind and deaf to everything.

When at last he could find his voice—­

“It was all—­a lie then—­about your—­husband!—­a lie—­to—­to get rid of me.”

“If you like to put it that way.”

Jimmy turned blindly to the door.  He felt like a drunken man.  He had opened it when she called his name; when she followed and caught his hand, holding him back.

“Jimmy, don’t go like that—­not without saying good-bye.  We’ve been such friends—­we’ve had such good times together.”

She was sobbing now; genuine enough sobs they seemed.  She clung to him desperately.

“I always loved you; you must have known that I did, only—­only——­ Oh, I couldn’t bear to be poor!  That was it, Jimmy.  I couldn’t face being poor.”

Jimmy stood like a statue.  One might almost have thought he had not been listening.  Then suddenly he wrenched his hand free.

“Let me go, for God’s sake—­let me go!”

He left her there, sobbing and calling his name.

She heard him go down the stairs—­heard the sullen slam of a distant door; then she rushed over to the window.

It was too dark to see him as he strode away from the house; everything seemed horribly silent and empty.

Jimmy had gone; and Cynthia Farrow knew, as she stood there in the disordered room, that by sending him away she had made the greatest mistake of her selfish life.