slips the writing was
visible, and she carried them back with her to the shelter of the
bureau.

She spread them out on the desk before her, carefully piecing them
together. She knew English quite well, and she soon made out one
sentence:--

"It is not that I do not love you--I have never loved you better than
at this moment--but...."

Celeste was sentimental. She gave a big sigh of sympathy for the big
Englishman. "No wonder he has no smile!" she told herself. "_C'est si
triste!_"

CHAPTER XV

It was raining and miserable when Micky arrived in London. The roads
were wet and slippery, and every taxi and omnibus splashed pedestrians
with mud.

Micky shivered as he stood waiting while a porter lugged his traps
down from the rack. He had felt depressed in Paris, but now London
seemed a thousand times worse. The sight of Driver waiting on the
platform annoyed him. He answered the man's stolid greeting
snappishly. He had wanted to come home, and yet now he was here he
wished himself a thousand miles away. He leaned back in a corner of
the taxi and shut his eyes.

The last four days had got on his nerves; Esther's letter in his
pocket was like an eternal reproach.

Why had he come back at all? She did not want him--nobody wanted him
in the whole forsaken world. The silence of his flat seemed a thing to
be dreaded in his present mood. Driver's inscrutable face would, he
felt, drive him mad. With sudden impulse he leaned forward and called
to the chauffeur, "Stop--I've changed my mind--drive me back to the
Savoy...."

There would be life there, at any rate--life and people and
music--something to make a man forget the depression that sat like a
ton weight on his shoulders.

He felt utterly at a loose end; he stalked moodily into the lounge.
There were many people there, girls in pretty dinner frocks, with
their attendant cavaliers. Micky glanced at none of them, till
suddenly a girl who had been sitting on a couch listening rather
listlessly to the conversation of a youth beside her, rose to her feet
when she saw Micky, the hot colour flying to her cheeks.

For a moment she hesitated, waiting for him to look at her, to
speak--but Micky had stalked by without turning his eyes, and after
the barest second she followed and touched his arm.

"Micky...." she said breathlessly, and again "Micky," with an odd
little catch in her voice.

Micky turned as if he had been shot, then stopped dead, colouring up
t