oice was only a
broken whisper. "Tell me--oh, please, please, tell me. You don't care
for her, do you?--it isn't true, is it?"

She forgot that he did not know of what she was speaking; it seemed as
if everybody in the world must know of this tragedy that had desolated
her life.

"I can't bear it any longer--it's no use.... I've borne all I can....
O Micky ... Micky."

He forced her hands from his arms; he put her back into the chair and
sat beside her; he hated to see the white despair of her face.

"You're ill--upset.... It's all right--everything is all right. You're
not to worry any more.... Everything is all right."

At that moment he would have given his soul could he have truthfully
said that he wanted her for his wife. He cursed himself for a cur and
a coward, but somehow he could not force the words to his lips.

She lay back against the cushions, hiding her face.

There was a tragic moment of silence. Out in the ballroom a noisy
one-step was in boisterous progress; there was a great deal of
laughter and chattering; the little anteroom seemed as if it must be
in another world.

Micky got up. He walked across the room and shut the door. There was a
hard look about his mouth. For an instant he stood staring down at the
floor irresolutely, then he came back to Marie. He bent over her, but
he did not touch her.

He spoke her name gently.

"Marie."

She did not raise her head.

"I want to speak to you," he said huskily.

She looked up then. Her face was flashed and quivering, and the brown
eyes that for a moment met his own were full of an unutterable grief
and shame.

"Oh," she said in a broken whisper. "If you'd just go away--and leave
me to myself."

Micky did not answer. The impossibility of ever going back now struck
him to the soul. This was the end, the very end--he had burned his
boats and bidden good-bye to the woman he loved for ever.

Then all his natural chivalry rose in his heart. Hitherto it had been
only of himself that he had thought, but now ... his eyes softened as
they rested on the girl's bowed head; he stooped and took her hand,
held it fast in his steady grip.

"Will you marry me?" he said very gently.

And, oh, the long time before she answered! It seemed to Micky that he
lived through years as he stood there with the rattling tune of the
one-step in his ears and Marie's tragic figure before his eyes. Was
she never going to speak?

Then she sat up very stiff and stra