"But now"—Christine interrupted steadily though she was driven by intolerable pain—"now it's too late. I'm not with you to-night for any reason except that—that I think it's my duty, and because I don't want your brother to know or to blame you. We—we can't ever be anything—except ordinary friends. I suppose we can't get unmarried, can we?" she said with a little quivering laugh. "But—but at least we need never be anything more than—than friends——"
Jimmy was very white; Christine had spoken so quietly, so decidedly, they were not angry words, not even deliberately chosen to hurt him, they sounded just final!
He caught her hand.
"Oh, my God, you don't mean that, Christine, you're just saying it to—to punish me, just to—to—pay me out. You don't really mean it—you don't mean that you've forgotten all the old days, you don't mean that you don't care for me any more—that you never will care for me again. I can't bear it. Oh, for God's sake say you don't mean that."
There was genuine anguish in his voice now, and in his eyes, but Christine was not looking at him, she was only remembering that he had once loved another woman desperately, passionately, and that because that woman was no longer living he wished to transfer his affections; she kept her eyes steadily before her, as she answered him:
"I am sorry, I don't want to hurt you, but—but I am afraid that—that is what I do mean."
There was a moment of absolute silence. She did not look at Jimmy; she was only conscious of the fierce desire in her heart to hurt him, to make him feel, make him suffer as he had once made her suffer in the days that seemed so far away now and dead that she could look back with wonderment at herself for the despair she had known then.
She was glad that she no longer suffered; glad that she had lost her passionate love for him in this numbed indifference. She wondered if he really felt her words, or if he were only pretending.
Once he had pretended to her so well that she had married him; now, as a consequence, she found herself suspecting him at every turn, doubting him whenever he spoke.
The train shot into a tunnel, and Christine caught her breath. She shrank a little farther away from Jimmy in the darkness, but she need not have feared. Seeing her instinctive movement he rose at once and walked away to the other side of the carriage. He hardly spoke to her again till they reached London.