the past four hours.
Since the moment when the Delands rang up to cancel his engagement to
dine he seemed to have stepped out of the old world into a new. He
wondered what Esther Shepstone was doing in the very horrid
boarding-house of which she had told him--if she was thinking of
Ashton.

What a cad the man was, what a cad!--he was amazed that he had not
discovered it before--to clear off and leave a girl like this, without
a word of farewell except the letter. He wondered if he meant to
deliver it and admit that he knew Ashton, or if he meant just to stick
a stamp on and post it to her.

He realised that there was nothing very much to be proud of in an
admission that he knew Ashton, and yet they had been friends for
years.

It was striking twelve when he got home; he stood for a moment on the
doorstep, looking up at the starry sky.

Several clocks were chiming midnight in the distance; he listened with
a queer sense of fatalism.

This was the strangest New Year's Eve he had ever spent in his life.
At this hour last year he had been dancing the old year out, and
to-night, had things gone as he had thought, he would have been
somewhere with Marie Deland--he might even have proposed to her by
this time. He smiled faintly, remembering that the intention had
really been somewhere in the background of his mind; but that, too,
had faded out now to give place to other, more important, factors.

Nine, ten, eleven, twelve! He counted the strokes mechanically; there
was a breathless pause, then the clash of bells.

Some irrepressibles in a block of flats near by raised a cheer; the
front door of a house opposite was open, and Micky caught a glimpse of
a crowded hall and black-coated men and girls in pretty frocks.

He felt strangely removed from all the noise and laughter; after a
moment he turned and went up to his room.

The fire had been carefully made up and his slippers and dressing-gown
put to warm. Micky looked at them with a sort of disgust; it was
sickening for a healthy grown man to be so pampered; he kicked the
slippers into a corner and tossed the dressing-gown on to the couch.

He wondered what sort of a room Esther Shepstone had in the very
horrid boarding-house--what odd corner the thin black cat curled into
to sleep.

He took Ashton's letter from 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 wo