"I suppose you must be as vulgar as you like to-day!" said Christine, with a dainty lift of her brow and an affected resignation. Then suddenly she turned and kissed him, saying gravely: "I'm grateful, John, and don't--don't think there's anything wrong in being generous." "I only know I've got to have you back with me," he said. "That's all I know about it anyhow." "I think it's enough, then," she whispered softly. Presently the gates of John's mouth were loosed, and he began to tell all his news. It was mainly about his business--how it flourished, how he had built up his credit again, of the successes he had won; that as soon as he had paid off his debts--a moment of embarrassment befell him here--they would be as well off as ever they had been; horses could be bought again, the diamonds could reappear, there would be no need to stint Christine of any of the things that she loved. All that he had longed for sympathetic ears to hear in the last months came bubbling out now. And Christine was ready to listen. As he talked and she heard, the old life seemed to revive, the old interests of every day came back, exercised anew their uniting power, and brought with them the old friendship and comradeship. Christine had said that they could "nearly forget." The words had her courage in them; they had her caution too. To forget what had come upon them and between them was impossible--in Christine's obstinate heart even at this moment hardly desired; but it was possible nearly to forget--at most times so nearly to forget as to relegate the thing to some distant chamber of the heart and not let it count in the commerce and communion of the life which they lived together and which bound them to one another with all its ties. That was the best thing which could be looked for, since the past, being irrevocable in deed, is also not to be forgotten in thought. They were picking up and piecing together the fragments. The ruin here had not been as utter as it had at poor Tom Courtland's, where the same process was being undertaken; but there had been a crash, and, though the pieces might be joined, there would be marks to show the fracture. Yet even the memory that refused to die brought its good with it. After the ruin came the love which had in the end sought restoration; if the one could not be forgotten, the other would always claim an accompanying remembrance. From this remembrance there might well emerge an affection deeper, stronger, and more proof against the worries and the friction of common life which in the old days had so often disturbed their peace and interrupted their friendship.