ning frocks and furs shivering
in the cold wind.

Micky drew Esther's hand through his arm.

"We shall find our cab this way, I think," he said evenly.

He had seen Mrs. Ashton only a few yards away, and he dreaded every
moment that Esther would see her, and see, too, who was with her.

A sudden block in the crowd momentarily hindered them, and in that
second a man's light laugh rang out above the noise and chatter of
voices.

Micky felt the girl beside him give a convulsive start. She tried to
drag her fingers from his, but he held them fast.

The crowd was moving again now; a second, and Raymond and his mother
were lost to sight.

Micky had slipped an arm round Esther; he was white to the lips. He
knew now how near he had been to discovery and the wreck of all his
hopes. He tried to pretend that he did not understand the cause of her
agitation. He looked down at her.

"Better now you're in the air?" he asked. "It was hot in the theatre.
I--Esther----"

She had swung heavily against him, and looking down in sudden alarm,
Micky saw that she had fainted.

CHAPTER XX

Looking back to that night at the theatre it always seemed to June
Mason that she had been most extraordinarily blind in not seeing
before that it was Esther for whom Micky Mellowes cared.

One glance at his face as he lifted the girl in his arms told her more
than any words would have done; there was a sort of indescribable rage
and pain in his eyes as he looked down at the white face lying against
his shoulder.

People gathered about them, curious and sympathetic. June heard some
one say that it had been so "deuced hot in the theatre, no wonder
people fainted," but she knew all the time that it was nothing to do
with the heat; she stooped mechanically and picked up Esther's gloves
which had fallen from her nerveless hand before she followed Micky
back into the foyer, where he laid Esther down on one of the long
velvet lounges.

Afterwards she realised that the sudden discovery that Micky loved her
friend had been something of a shock to her, that she had even been
faintly jealous; she did not want to marry him herself, and yet they
had been such good friends, it gave her an odd little pain to think
that there was somebody else whom he placed a long way ahead of her in
his heart.

Most of the people had gone, one or two of the theatre attendants
lingered; it seemed a long time before Esther opened her eyes. She lay
for a moment