ight--there were tears scorching
her flushed cheeks, and her eyes seemed to burn.

"Will I--will I--marry you?" she echoed, as if not understanding.

Her voice rose a little.

"Then it isn't true ... it can't be true--what he said?"

"What did he say? Who are you talking about? What do you mean?"

She began to sob; quiet, tearless sobs that seemed to bring no relief
with them.

"Raymond Ashton--he told me--here! just now--that you...." She
stopped, catching her breath at the change in Micky's face; it no
longer looked tender--his eyes were fierce.

"Ashton! What has he said?" His voice was roughly insistent.

"He told me that you--you were in Paris--a week or two ago--with a
girl from Eldred's."

"It's a lie!" The words escaped Micky before he could check them; his
first thought was to defend Esther. "It's an infernal lie!" he said
again violently.

It turned him cold to think of all that the brute must have implied.

The tears were frozen on Marie's cheeks--her hands were clasped
together in her lap.

When at last she found her voice it was strained and cracked.

"... that she told him you were there with her...." Her brown eyes
searched his face as if they were trying to read his very soul. "If
it's a lie," she said shrilly, "it's she who is lying--she told
Raymond Ashton that she was there with you."

"She told him...."

For a moment Micky stood like a man turned to stone. Was this the
truth?--that Esther had told Ashton....

He looked again at Marie.

"When did Ashton tell you this?"

"To-night--not a moment ago--he is here."

"Here!" Then to how many more people had he told the same distorted
story?

The blood beat into Micky's face; it seemed to hammer maddeningly
against his temples. Nothing counted but the fact that Esther's name
was being bandied about on the lips of the creature. To stop him--to
stop his lying tongue was the one thought in Micky's mind; he saw the
whole world red as he tore open the door of the silent room and strode
out into the corridor.

The noisy ragtime had ceased, but a storm of deafening applause and
cries of "Encore!" filled the ballroom.

An elderly man cannoned into Micky, and stopped short with a laughing
apology.

"Hullo, Mellowes--not dancing--what the deuce is the matter?" he asked
with sudden change of voice.

Micky passed a shaking hand across his mouth--

"Nothing ... where's Ashton--have you seen Ashton?"

"I've just left him; he isn't danc