his pocket and stuck it up against the clock on the mantelshelf.

“Miss Esther Shepstone....”

It was fate, that’s what it was! He wondered if she would ever have lived to get that letter had fate not thrown her across his path that night.

She had been desperate––at the end of her tether, and all for the sake of that cad Ashton.

He turned his back on the letter and lit a cigarette, but he let it go out almost at once, and turned back again to stare once more at the name scrawled on the envelope.

What had Ashton written to her? It worried him because he did not know. Ashton had had other love-affairs––not quite such serious ones, perhaps, but still serious enough––and Micky knew that when he had wearied of them he had set about getting free of them by the shortest route, caring little if it were also a brutal one. He thought of the despair he had seen in Esther’s face that evening; he dreaded that there might be something in Ashton’s farewell letter that would plunge her back more deeply into her misery.

25

Out in the night the bells were still ringing joyously.

It was New Year’s morning, and perhaps, if he sent that letter ... He stood quite still for a moment, staring at it; then suddenly he threw his cigarette into the fire and snatched the letter down from the shelf.

He tore it open impulsively and drew out the enclosure. He unfolded it and began to read. The silence of the room was unbroken save for the little crisp sound as Micky turned the paper; then the letter fluttered to the rug at his feet and lay there, half-curled up, as if it were ashamed of the words it bore and wished to hide them.

Micky raised his eyes and looked at his reflection in the glass above the mantelshelf. The pallor of his face surprised him, and the look of passionate anger in his eyes.

He was a man of the world. He was no better and no worse than many of the men whom he knew and called his friends, but this letter, in its brutal callousness, seemed to shame his very manhood.

He had liked Ashton, had been his constant companion for months, but he had never suspected him of being capable of this.

He supposed he ought to be ashamed of having opened the letter, but he was not ashamed; he was glad that he had been able to 

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