“Oh, all right⁠ ⁠… all right, sweetheart,” he said soothingly. “You talk as if I asked to see your shift! By the way, Chris, I suppose you don’t realize that I never have seen that room in there where you spend your nights?”

Christie smiled with intense amusement at this. She rose lightly, without a trace of embarrassment, took a candle from the mantelpiece, threw her cigarette into the fire, and opened the door into the alcove. A second door on the further side of this recess she opened with the same docile unconcern, standing aside to let him enter, while the flame of her candle flickered in the draught.