was a note of exasperation in his voice. "You were
crying--I heard you, and people don't walk about the streets at this
time of night and cry if there's nothing the matter. If that's a baby
you've got with you, you ought to know better than to----" He broke
off. She was laughing, a weak, uncertain little laugh.

"A baby!" she said tremulously. "It isn't a baby; it's a cat."

"A cat!" Micky's voice was full of disgust. He looked down at her from
his superior height with sudden suspicion. If this was just a hoax?

"Well, what's the matter anyway?" he asked again.

She looked away from him without answering.

Micky began to feel a bit of a fool; he wished he had not yielded to
the impulse to follow her. After all, it was no business of his if a
stranger chose to walk about his road and weep; he looked at her
impatiently.

Her hair beneath its not very smart hat shone golden in the lamplight,
and the little oval of cheek and rounded chin which was all he could
see of her averted face somehow touched a forgotten chord in his heart
and made him think of his boyhood and the girl-mother who had not
lived long enough to be more than a memory....

"Don't think I'm interfering or trying to annoy you," he said again.
"But if there is anything I can do to help you...."

She shook her head.

"There isn't anything.... I ought to have known better than to let you
hear that I was crying ... there's nothing the matter, I----" Then
quite suddenly she broke down again into bitter sobbing. "Oh, I'm so
miserable--so utterly miserable--I wish I were dead!"

Micky was appalled; he had heard women say that sort of thing before,
and had said it himself scores of times, but never with that note of
tragedy which he heard in this girl's voice.

Ten minutes ago he had considered himself the most miserable of
mortals because he had been let down over a dinner; he was ashamed of
his temper now as he stood there in the starlight and listened to this
girl's sobbing.

"Look here," he said after a moment, "you'll never feel any better if
you stay out here in the cold. I don't suppose you've had a
respectable meal for hours either--I know what women are. Where do you
live? You'll soon feel better when you get beside a fire and have
something to eat."

"I'm not going home any more," she said.

She spoke quite quietly, but with a sort of despair which there was no
mistaking.

Micky was a rapid thinker. He had clean forgotten his headache.