"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.