d shown him that evening. She did not speak again for some
time.

In the interval June leaned over to him.

"Are you bored, Micky? You look bored to death."

Micky stifled a sigh.

"No," he said rather wearily.

His eyes wandered round the crowded house. There were several people
in the stalls whom he knew. He noticed that people were looking at
Esther, and he felt a little thrill of pride.

They were wondering who she was, of course. He wished with all his
heart that he could stand up in his seat and announce to an interested
world that she was the woman he intended to marry.

When the light went down again Esther leaned a little closer to him.

"Mr. Mellowes----" she said.

"Yes." Micky bent his head towards her eagerly. He could hear her
agitated breathing, hear too the little quiver in her voice when she
spoke.

"Did you see who was in that box on the right?--the lower box.... I
thought it was Mrs. Ashton."

Micky answered casually that very likely it was.

"Odd, eh," he said, "that we should dine at the same place and have
tickets for the same show?"

Esther said "Yes--yes" twice in nervous hurry.

There was something strained and unnatural about her, and though Micky
could not see her face clearly he knew that something had happened to
distress her.

"What is it?" he asked anxiously. "Is anything the matter?"

She shook her head.

"No.... No."

She sat very still till the curtain fell again, but Micky had the
feeling that she was not paying the least attention to what was going
on on the stage, and he knew that her eyes turned again and again to
the stage box. What was she afraid of, he asked himself in perplexity,
even if Mrs. Ashton did see her and recognize her, surely--then in a
flash he knew ... the light had been turned up suddenly, and in that
moment he saw the figure of a man move quickly from the front of the
box to the screen of the curtains.

Micky gripped the arms of his seat; for the moment he could not move.

It was Raymond--he knew it as certainly as if he had been told.

No doubt he had seen Esther, whilst she ... poor child! Had she seen
him too?

He looked down at her; she was sitting up stiffly, her hands clasped
in the lap of the new frock of which she had been so innocently proud;
her face was as white as the soft tulle of her sleeves, and her eyes
were fixed on the box with its velvet curtains where Mrs. Ashton sat
laughing and chatting with a girl in a pink froc