Esther looked down at the crumpled envelope--
"From--Micky?..." she said. She was only half awake; she made a very fair picture there with her long hair tumbling about her shoulders, and her face a little flushed and startled.
"I'll go away--you don't want me.... I'll go----" but Esther caught her hand.
"Very well--but I'm half frozen...." June looked plaintively at Esther, but Esther had forgotten her, and she dragged the quilt from the bed, and wrapped it round her small figure till she looked like a mummy.
There was a long silence, then Esther raised her eyes to June's anxious face.
Her own was quite colourless, and her grey eyes looked dazed.
"Will you--will you--read it?" she said faintly. "Please--I want you to--I ... somehow I feel as if I'm dreaming."
But June at any rate was wide awake. It only took her two minutes to read Micky's passionate appeal; the next she was laughing and crying together, and hugging Esther boisterously.
"Oh, isn't he the most wonderful man? Don't you love him? Don't you just adore him? Oh, if you're going to break his heart after all this, I'll _never_ forgive you!... Why, my George isn't in it with Micky, poor darling!"--she shook Esther in her excitement--"What are you made of, that you can't see what a king he is? I don't believe there's any blood in your veins at all," she declared indignantly. "You haven't got a heart.... Oh, Esther darling! I didn't mean it--I--oh, I'm such an idiot!..."
And the two girls clasped each other and cried together.
"And now if this ridiculous midnight scene is ended," June said presently, sniffing her tears away, "let's talk sense. I'll go and see Micky in the morning and explain everything. He knows what I am--he won't be at all surprised--oh, I'm so glad--so more than glad.... Oh, Esther, _why_ do you hide your face?"
"Because I'm so ashamed," Esther said in a stifled voice. "I'm not worth loving--I've ... oh, you don't _know_ how I've treated him!"
June was silent for a minute, then she said gently--
"But Micky will forget all that--Micky never remembered a mean thing against anybody in his life." She forced Esther to look at her. "Tell me one thing, and then I'll go and leave you in peace," she coaxed. "Do you--do you ... _you_ know?"