ively 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.

She was a pretty good judge of character; she knew quite well what sort
of a man Jimmy Challoner was. And six months--well, six months was a
long time.

"Mr. Kettering knows Jimmy's brother," Christine said presently, drying
her eyes. "So I suppose if he comes to live anywhere near here, he
will know what--what is the matter with--with me and Jimmy, and he'll
write and tell Horace."

"And then Jimmy will get his allowance stopped, and serve him right,"
said Gladys bluntly.

Christine cried out in dismay:

"Oh, but that would be dreadful! What would he do?"

"Work, like other men, of course."

But Christine would not listen.

"I shall ask Mr. Kettering not to tell Horace--if I ever see him
again," she said agitatedly.

Gladys laughed dryly.

"Oh, you'll see him again right enough," she said laconically.

CHAPTER XVII

JIMMY BREAKS OUT

It took Jimmy a whole week to realise that Christine meant what she
said when she asked him not to write to her, or go near her. At first
he had been so sure that in a day or two at most she would be sorry,
and want to see him; somehow he could not believe that the little
unselfish girl he had known all his life could so determinedly make up
her mind and stick to it.

He grumbled and growled to Sangster every time they met.

"I was a fool to let