, looking vaguely about her, then her eyes came back to
Micky, who was bending over her, his face scarcely less white than her
own.

She made an effort to lift herself from his arm; then quite suddenly
she burst into tears.

The little sound of sobbing broke the spell that seemed, to have held
June; she went down on her knees beside her, both arms round the
slender, shaking figure.

Micky had risen to his feet. June glanced up at him.

"Go and find the taxi and leave her to me," she said sharply. The look
of suffering in his face hurt her. Micky went out into the cold night
bareheaded. He hardly knew what he was doing. He stood for some
minutes on the path forgetting why he had come out at all, before some
one, jostling against him, brought him back to a sense of time and
place.

He went down the road to look for a taxi. When he came back Esther was
sitting up, wrapped in her cloak. She was not crying now, but she
looked like a child who wants to cry but is determined not to.

June was standing beside her.

"We're quite ready," she said. She kept an arm about Esther, and Micky
followed them silently.

He saw them into the cab, but did not follow. June asked a sharp
question: "Aren't you coming?"

"No--at least, not if you can manage without me." His voice sounded
unnerved; he looked away from June to where Esther was huddled into a
corner beside her, and suddenly, as if urged by an impulse he could
not control, he leaned forward, groped for her hand in the darkness,
and, bending, kissed it passionately.

A moment later he had stepped back and shut the door.

He stood looking after the cab till it vanished round a corner, then
he went back to the theatre for his hat and coat, and set off again
down the road.

He was not conscious of any real emotion; but he walked swiftly as a
man does who has a set purpose, and he did not stop till he found
himself outside the Ashtons' house.

It was not far off midnight, but lights burned in many of the windows,
and after a swift glance at the face of the house he went up the steps
and rang the bell.

It was some moments before the door was opened by a mildly amazed-looking
servant; Micky asked for Mr. Ashton.

"My name is Mellowes," he said, as she obviously hesitated. "If you
tell him my name he will see me. I know he is in, I saw him at the
Comedy Theatre to-night."

He stepped past the girl into the hall, and after a slightly scared
glance at him she shut the