“For God’s sake don’t cry,” he broke out at length.  “It drives me mad to see you cry.  I’ll find a way out.  We should have been so happy.  I can’t give you up.”

He spoke incoherently and stammeringly.  He was really very much in love, and now the thought of separation was a burning glass, magnifying that love a thousandfold.

There were voices outside.  Cynthia hastily dried her eyes.  She did not look as if she had been crying very bitterly.

“That’s my call.  I shall have to go.  Don’t keep me now.  I’ll write, Jimmy.  I’ll see you again.”

“You promise me that, whatever happens?”

“I promise.”  He caught her fingers and kissed them.  “Darling, I’ll come back for you when the show’s over.  I can’t bear to leave you like this.  You do love me?”

“Do you need to ask?”

The words were an evasion, but he did not notice it.  He went back to the stage box feeling as if the world had come to an end.

He forgot all about the Wyatts in the stalls below.  Christine’s brown eyes turned towards him again and again, but he never once looked her way.  His attention was centered on the stage and the woman who played there.

She was so beautiful he could never give her up, he told himself passionately.  With each moment her charm seemed to grow.  He watched her with despairing eyes; life without her was a crude impossibility.  He could not imagine existence in a world where he might not love her.  That other fellow—­curse the other fellow!—­he ground his teeth in impotent rage.

The brute had deserted her years ago and left her to starve.  He had not the smallest claim on her How.  By the time the play was ended Jimmy Challoner had worked himself into a white heat of rage and despair.

Christine Wyatt, glancing once more towards him as the curtain rose for the final call, wondered a little at the tense, unyielding attitude of his tall figure.  He was standing staring at the stage as if for him there was nothing else in all the world.  She stifled a little sigh as she turned to put on her cloak.

The house was still applauding and clamouring for Cynthia to show herself again.  Challoner waited.  He loved to see her come before the curtain—­loved the little graceful way she bowed to her audience.

But to-night he waited in vain, and when at last he pushed his way round to the stage door it was only to be told that Miss Farrow had left the theatre directly the play was over.

Challoner’s heart stood still for a moment.  She had done this deliberately to avoid him, he was sure.  He asked an agitated question.

“Did she—­did she go alone?”

The doorkeeper answered without looking at him, “There was a gent with her, sir—­Mr. Mortlake, I think.”

Challoner went out into the night blindly.  He had to pass the theatre to get back to the main street.  Mrs. Wyatt and Christine were just entering a taxi.  Christine saw him.  She touched his arm diffidently as he passed.