overing from the severe chill
which had made him quite ill for the time being.

A Jimmy who spoke very little, and asked no questions at all, and who
took the letter apathetically enough, and laid it by as soon as he had
read it.

"You wrote to her, then," he said indifferently.

"Yes."

"You might have saved yourself the trouble; I knew she would not come.
If you had asked me I could have told you. Of course, you suggested
that she _should_ come."

"Yes."

Jimmy's eyes smiled faintly.

"Interfering old ass," he said affectionately.

Sangster coloured. He was very unhappy about Jimmy; he had always
known that he was not particularly strong, and, as a matter of fact,
during the past few days Jimmy had grown most surprisingly thin and
weak, though he still insisted that there was nothing the matter with
him--nothing at all.

There was a little silence.

"I suppose that's meant for a dig at me," said Jimmy presently. "That
bit about having so many friends. . . . She means Kettering, I
suppose."

"I don't see why she should," said Sangster awkwardly.

Jimmy laughed rather grimly.

"Well, it's only tit for tat if she does," he said. "But I
thought----" He did not finish; did not say that he had thought
Christine cared too much for him ever to give a thought to another
fellow. He turned his head against the cushions and pretended to
sleep, and presently Sangster went quietly away.

He thought that Christine had--well, not behaved badly. How could
anyone blame her for anything she chose to do or not to do, after what
had occurred? But, still, he was vaguely disappointed in her; he
thought she ought to have come--just to see how Jimmy really was.

But Christine was not thinking very much about Jimmy in those days at
all. Somehow the foreground of her life seemed to have got filled up
with the figure of another man; a man whom she had never once seen
since that drive over to Heston.

Sometimes she thought she would write a little note and ask him to come
to tea; sometimes she thought she would walk the way in which she knew
she could always meet him, but something restrained her.

And then one afternoon, quite unexpectedly, she ran into him in the
village.

He was coming out of the little post office as she was going in, and he
pulled up short with a muttered apology before he recognised her;
then--well, then they both got red, and a little flame crept into
Kettering's eyes.

"I thought I wa