At the back of her mind was the frightened knowledge that she was alone in Paris; that she had nobody to turn to now that Micky had deserted her; but as yet it was only in the background. Raymond was somewhere, perhaps quite close; but she no longer felt that she wanted to go to him.
Further on she found another bench sheltered under some trees and sat down again; she opened the suit-case and took out a bundle of Micky's letters ... Micky's! No, Raymond's.... Oh, whose letters were they?
She opened the one that had been written from the hotel in Paris. Its fond words seemed to take on a new meaning....
"Some day, if all that I wish for comes true, I will tell you the many things you would not let me say when we were last together...."
The one sentence caught her eye. She wondered that she had never before thought how unlike Raymond this was. Why was it she had not realised before that Raymond could never have written this?
Somewhere in the distance a church clock chimed; Esther found herself mechanically counting the bells--nine, ten, eleven! All those hours since Micky had left her at the station.
She was cold and hungry, but it did not seem to matter; she felt there was a great, unanswered question in her mind which she must settle.
She rose and walked on again; she turned out of the gardens and found herself in a street of shops. People looked at her curiously.
Hardly knowing that she did so, she stopped and looked in at a jeweller's window; there were trays of precious stones. She felt her own ring beneath the glove--she had worn it so long now, she wondered how she would feel when she had to take it off. Of course, she could not go on wearing it if Raymond was really married.
Micky had once gone into a pond on a bitter night to save a kitten from drowning; she wondered what made her remember that.
The man who could save a drowning kitten would never hurt a woman so that she could hardly think or feel; June had claimed for Micky that he was the best man in the world.
"But I don't believe in him--I don't believe anything he says," Esther told herself feverishly; she moved on again away from the trays of flashing diamonds.
Two girls passing her were chattering in French--Esther looked after them vaguely.