of recklessness that made Micky frown. She leaned back in her chair with sudden weariness. “It’s very kind of you,” she said disinterestedly.

“It’s not kind at all,” he hastened to assure her. “I’m much more pleased to be with you than you are to be with me. If it hadn’t been for you I should have spent this evening alone––New Year’s Eve, too,” he added, with a sort of chagrin and a sudden memory of Marie Deland.

“New Year’s Eve!” she echoed. She closed her eyes for a moment, and Micky had an uncomfortable sort of feeling that she was looking back on the year that was dying and could see nothing pleasant in the whole of the twelve months. Presently she opened them again with a little sigh. “Well, I don’t want another year like the last one,” she said.

“You won’t have,” he told her promptly. “I’ve got a sort of feeling that there are lots of good things coming along for you. The luck has to change some time or other, and if you’ve had a rotten time in the past you won’t have it in the future.”

“I don’t believe in luck,” she said.

“Don’t you? I do,” Micky declared. He hated the despondency in her face; he felt a strong desire to see 11 her smiling and happy. He rattled on, talking any nonsense that came into his head.

11

The waiter came down the room and set the dishes on the table. He gave a sort of supercilious sniff when Micky asked for a saucer of milk for the cat. He looked at Charlie with scorn––Charlie, curled up on the girl’s lap now and purring lustily.

“Of course, you know, we really ought to have a bottle of wine,” Micky said dubiously. “Just something cheap, as it’s New Year’s Eve.”

He would like to have given her champagne, but dared not suggest it. He was quite sure that if she knew he was a rich man she would fly off at a tangent. He ordered an inexpensive bottle of red wine and filled her glass.

“Well, here’s luck to the New Year,” he said sententiously. “And to our delightfully unexpected meeting,” he added.

She flushed up to her eyes.

“Are you always as kind to people as you have been to me?” she asked tensely.

Micky blushed.

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