He choked back a big sigh; he found Christine’s hand and raised it to his lips.

“We shall get along swimmingly,” he said with an effort.  “Don’t you worry your little head.”

But she was not satisfied.

“I must be so different from all the other women you are used to,” she told him wistfully.  “I’m not smart or amusing—­and I don’t dress as well as they do.”

Jimmy smiled.

“Well, one can always buy clothes,” he said.  A sudden wave of tenderness swept through his heart as he looked at her.  “Anyway, you’ve got one pull over all of them,” he said with momentary sentiment.

“Have I—­Jimmy!  What do you mean?”

He kissed her trembling little fingers again.

“You were my first love,” he said with a touch of embarrassment.  “And it’s not many men who can claim to have married their first love.”

Christine was quite happy now; she bent and kissed him before she went back to her seat.  Jimmy felt considerably cheered.  If she were as easily pleased as this, life would not be the difficult thing that he had imagined, he told himself.  He selected a chocolate cake—­suitably heart-shaped—­and began to munch it with a sort of relish.

“How would you like to run over to Paris for a few days—­later on, of course, I mean?” he added hastily, meeting her eyes.  It would be rather fun showing Christine round Paris, he thought.  He looked at her with a twinkle.

She was very pretty, anyway; he was proud of her, too, deep down in his heart.  No doubt after a bit they would be quite happy together.

He finished the chocolate cake, and asked if he might smoke; he was longing for a cigarette.  He was not quite sure if it would be correct to smoke in a room which would be chiefly used by Christine.  With Cynthia things had been so different—­she smoked endless cigarettes herself; there was never any need to ask permission of her.

He could not imagine Christine with a cigarette between her pretty lips.  And yet—­yet he had liked it with Cynthia.  Odd how different women were.

“Please do smoke,” said Christine.  She was glad he had asked her; glad that for the rest of his life whenever he smoked a cigarette, it would not merely be Jimmy Challoner blowing puffs of smoke into the air, but her husband.  She glowed at the thought.

Jimmy was much more happy now; to his own way of thinking he was getting on by leaps and bounds.  He went over and sat on the arm of Christine’s chair; another moment and he would have put an arm round her, but a soft, apologetic tapping at the door sent him flying away from her to the other side of the room.

He was carefully turning the pages of a book when he answered, “Come in,” with elaborate carelessness.  One of the hotel servants entered; he carried a letter on a tray; he handed it to Christine.

“A messenger from the Sunderland Hotel has just brought this, madam.  He told me to say that it has been there two days, but they did not know till this morning where to send it on to you.”