“What do you think Jimmy would say?”

“Jimmy!” There was such depths of bitterness in Christine’s voice that the elder girl stared.

“Jimmy!  He wouldn’t care what I did, or what became of me.  I—­I—­I’m never going to live with him any more.”

Gladys opened her mouth to say something, and closed it again.

She had guessed that there had been something behind that urgent wire from Jimmy, but she wisely asked no questions.  They went back into the house together.

“You’ll have to know in the end, so I may as well tell you now,” Christine said hopelessly.  She sat down on the rug by the fire, a forlorn little figure enough in her black frock.

She told the whole story from beginning to end.  She blamed nobody; she just spoke as if the whole thing had been a muddle which nobody could have foreseen or averted.

Gladys listened silently.  She was a very sensible girl; she seldom gave an impulsive judgment on any subject; but now——­

“Jimmy wants his neck wrung,” she said vehemently.

Christine looked up with startled eyes.

“Oh, how can you say such a thing!”

“Because it’s true.”  Gladys looked very angry.  “He’s behaved in a rotten way; men always do, it seems to me.  He married you to spite this—­this other woman, whoever she was! and then—­even then he didn’t try to make it up to you, or be ordinarily decent and do his best, did he?”

“He didn’t love me, you see; and so——­” Christine defended him.

“He’ll never love anyone in the wide world except himself,” Gladys declared disgustedly.  “I remember years ago, when we were all kiddies together, how selfish he was, and how you always gave in to him.  Christine”—­she stretched out her hand impulsively to the younger girl—­“do you love him very much?” she asked.

Christine put her head down on her arms.

“Oh, I did—­I did,” she said, ashamedly.  “Sometimes I wonder if—­if he hadn’t been quite so—­so sure of me! if—­if he would have cared just a little bit more.  He must have known all along that I wanted him; and so——­” She broke off desolately.

The two girls sat silent for a moment.

“And now—­what’s he going to do now?” Gladys demanded.

Christine sighed.

“I told him I didn’t want to see him.  I told him I didn’t want him to come down here for six months—­and he promised. . . .  He isn’t to come or even to write unless—­unless I ask him to.”

“And then—­what happens then?”

Christine began to cry.

“Oh, I don’t know—­I don’t know,” she sobbed.  “I am so miserable—­I wish I were dead.”

Gladys laid a hand on her bowed head.

“You’re so young, Christine,” she said sadly.  “Somehow I don’t believe you’ll ever grow up.”  She had not got the heart to tell her that she thought this six months separation could do no good at all—­that it would only tend to widen the breach already between them.