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.
It was fate, that's what it was! He wondered if she would ever have lived to get that letter had fate not thrown her across his path that night.
She had been desperate--at the end of her tether, and all for the sake of that cad Ashton.
He turned his back on the letter and lit a cigarette, but he let it go out almost at once, and turned back again to stare once more at the name scrawled on the envelope.
What had Ashton written to her? It worried him because he did not know. Ashton had had other love-affairs--not quite such serious ones, perhaps, but still serious enough--and Micky knew that when he had wearied of them he had set about getting free of them by the shortest route, caring little if it were also a brutal one. He thought of the despair he had seen in Esther's face that evening; he dreaded that there might be something in Ashton's farewell letter that would plunge her back more deeply into her misery.
Out in the night the bells were still ringing joyously.
It was New Year's morning, and perhaps, if he sent that letter ... He stood quite still for a moment, staring at it; then suddenly he threw his cigarette into the fire and snatched the letter down from the shelf.
He tore it open impulsively and drew out the enclosure. He unfolded it and began to read. The silence of the room was unbroken save for the little crisp sound as Micky turned the paper; then the letter fluttered to the rug at his feet and lay there, half-curled up, as if it were ashamed of the words it bore and wished to hide them.