"Is the cigarette person still able to walk about?" asked Christina incredulously. "Yes, but they are very bad friends. Moropulos says he'll get even with Sault." "Unhappy man," said Christina, "Ronnie is getting quite communicative, isn't he?" "We're real friends," answered the girl enthusiastically, "we're just pals! I sometimes feel--I don't know whether I ought to tell you this. But I will. I sometimes feel that I really don't want to marry Ronnie at all. I feel that I could be perfectly happy, married to somebody else, if I had him for a friend. Isn't that queer?" Christina thought it was queer and wondered if this attitude of mind was Evie's very own or whether it had grown by suggestion. But she had evidently done Ronnie an injustice in this instance. "I've never told Ronnie this," said Evie. "I don't fancy that he would understand, but I did ask him whether he thought that he could be friends with Beryl Merville if she married somebody else. I only asked him for fun, just to hear what he would say. My dear, how he loathes that girl! I could tell he was sincere. He was so furious! He said that if she married, he would never visit her house and he wished he had never seen her." Christina made no response. It was on the tip of her tongue to say that Beryl Merville must know the man very well to have excited such hatred, but she observed the truce. When Ambrose put in an appearance late in the evening she learned that he had heard from the osteopath. His large smile told her that even before he spoke. "Now, Ambrose, did he say anything about massage?" Ambrose nodded. "I'll do it if you'll let me," he said simply. "My hands aren't as awkward as they look." Later her mother, who had been an interested spectator of the treatment, spoke a great truth. "It seems natural for Mr. Sault to be rubbing your back, Christina. He's just like a--a soul with hands--sounds ridiculous I know, but that is what I felt. He wasn't a man and he wasn't a woman. It seemed natural, somehow--how did you feel about it?" "Mother, I begin to feel that I got my genius from you," said Christina, patting a rumpled sheet into place, "I couldn't have bettered that; 'a soul with hands'!" Mrs. Colebrook blinked complacently. "I've always been a bit clever in describing people," she said. "Do you remember how I used to call Evie 'spitfire'?" "Don't spoil my illusions mother--'a soul with hands' entitles you to my everlasting respect. And don't tell Evie, or she'll talk about his feet. He has big feet, I admit, though he makes less noise than Evie. And he snores, I heard him last night." XIII There came a day when Christina put her feet to the grimy pavement of the street and walked slowly but without assistance to Dr. Merville's car, borrowed through Beryl, for the afternoon. It was a cold, clear day in January, the wind was in the east and the gutters of Walter Street were covered with a thin film of ice.