He tried to think, but his thoughts would not come clearly. When he got back to his rooms he asked Driver for a stiff brandy. The man looked at his master diffidently, and asked if anything were the matter.
"Why? Do I look as if there is?" He glanced at himself in the mirror. His face was very white.
"No, there's nothing the matter. I'm tired, that's all."
Driver turned to the door, but Micky called him back.
"You've been with me a good many years, Driver," he said.
The man's stolidness did not change a fraction.
"If you were to hear that I'm married, you wouldn't be surprised, would you?" he asked with a rush.
"You would even say that you knew that I've been married some weeks, wouldn't you?"
When he left this room three hours ago it had been with the determination to put the past behind him for ever, and what had he done? Only walked more deeply into his quixotism and seriously compromised the woman he loved.
He had said that she was his wife. It gave him a little thrill to remember that a dozen of his acquaintances had heard him say it, and were probably even now spreading the story of his marriage far and wide.
He paced up and down the room. He had failed all round; even love and desperate desire had not been able to help him.
He thought suddenly of June; June who, with all her bluntness, had a great heart and a deep understanding.
She would not want explanations; she would know why he had done it, and sympathise.
But June was obviously not the one concerned. It was not to June that he must confess.
The clock in his room struck twelve; too late to do anything to-night. The memory of Marie returned--Marie as she had looked when he found her in the drawing-room that night; as she had looked when he had left her in the little anteroom at the Hoopers' and gone out with murder in his heart to find Ashton.
"Oh, you cad--you cad!" he said with a groan.
Life was an intolerable, purposeless thing. He sat down at his desk and leaned his head in his hands. His whole life seemed to spell failure. With sudden impulse he seized a pen and began to write.
For the first few moments he hardly knew what he wrote. It was only when he reached the end of the first page that he seemed to realise with a start what he had done. He looked back at the written lines with something of a shock. There was no beginning to the letter, no date or address; it simply started off as if the pen had been guided by some influence outside himself, some desperate need.