s--slightly."

"You don't sound as if you like her," she said quickly.

He laughed in spite of himself.

"Perhaps because she doesn't like me," he answered.

"Doesn't she?" Christine's grave eyes searched his face. "I like you,
anyway," she said.

Sangster did not look at her, but a little flush rose to his brow.

"Thank you," he said, and his voice sounded, somehow, quite changed.

As the curtain fell on the second act, he rose quietly from his seat
and went round to where Jimmy stood.

"Take my place," he said in an undertone. Jimmy looked up. He had not
been following the play; he had been thinking--thinking always of the
same thing, always of the past few weeks, and the shock of their ending.

He rose to his feet rather reluctantly. Sangster sat down beside Mrs.
Wyatt.

Once or twice he looked across to Christine. She and Jimmy were not
talking very much, but there was a little smile on Christine's face,
and she looked at Jimmy very often.

Jimmy sat with his chin in the palm of his hand, staring before him
with moody eyes. Sangster felt a sort of impatience. What the deuce
could the fellow ever have seen in Cynthia Farrow? he asked himself.
Was he blind, that he could not penetrate her shallowness, and see the
small selfishness of her nature?

A pretty face and laugh, and an undoubted knowledge of men--they were
all the assets she possessed; and Sangster knew it. But to
Jimmy--Sangster metaphorically shrugged his shoulders as he looked at
his friend's moody face.

How could he sit there next to that child and not realise that in his
longing he was only grasping at a shadow? What was he made of that he
saw more beauty in Cynthia Farrow's blue eyes than in the sweet face of
his boyhood's love?

Sangster was glad when the play was over; theatres always bored him.
He did not quite know why he had invited himself to Jimmy's box
to-night. When they rose to leave he smiled indulgently at Christine's
rapt face.

"You have enjoyed it," he said.

"Yes--ever so much. But I liked Miss Farrow and the play she was in
better."

Jimmy turned sharply away; nobody answered.

"We're going on to Marnio's to supper," Jimmy said as they crossed the
foyer. "Christine has never been there."

She looked up instantly.

"No, I haven't."

"It's the place to see stage favourites," Sangster told her.

In his heart he was surprised that Jimmy should choose to go there. He
thought it extremely probable