board; he spoke to her urgently.

"Say you forgive me, Christine. If you'll just shake hands----"

She drew back, as if she found him distasteful.

The train was gathering speed. A porter made a grab at Jimmy.

"Stand back, sir."

Jimmy obeyed mechanically. Christine would not have cared had he been
killed, he told himself savagely.

But for his pig-headed foolishness, he and Christine might have been
going down to Upton House together; but for the past----

"Damn the past!" said Jimmy Challoner as he turned on his heel and
walked away.

* * * * * *

But the past was very real to Christine as she sat there alone in a
corner of the first-class carriage into which Jimmy had put her, and
stared before her with dull eyes at a row of photographs advertising
seaside places.

This was the end of all her dreams of happiness. She and Jimmy were
separated; it seemed impossible that they had ever really been
married--that she was really his wife and he her husband.

She dragged off her glove, and looked at her wedding ring; she had
never taken it off since the moment in that dingy London church when
Jimmy had slipped it on.

And yet it was such an empty symbol. He had never loved her; he had
married her because some other woman, whom he did love, was beyond his
reach.

She did not cry; she seemed to have shed all the tears in her heart.
She just sat there motionless as the train raced her back to the old
house and the old familiar scenes, where she had been happy--many years
ago--with Jimmy Challoner.

He had wired to Gladys Leighton; Gladys would be there at the station
to meet her. She wondered what she would say to her.

She thought of the uncle who had journeyed to London with such
reluctance to give her away; he would tell her that it served her
right, she was sure. Even on her wedding day he had trotted out the
old maxim of marrying in haste.

Christine smiled faintly as she thought of him; after all, she need not
see much of him--he did not live near Upton House. When the restaurant
attendant came to tell her that lunch was ready, she followed him
obediently. Jimmy had tipped him half-a-crown to make sure that
Christine went to the dining-car. She even enjoyed her meal. A man
sitting at the same table with her looked at her curiously from time to
time; he was rather a good-looking man. Once when she dropped her
gloves he stooped and picked them up for her; late