“I am ready if you are,” she said. She did not look at him, but it felt like dying to walk beside him out of the shop and into the cold air and know that perhaps this was the last time they would ever be alone, he and she. Once her steps faltered a little, and Micky put out his hand to steady her, but she drew away from him.
“Please don’t,” she said in a whisper.
There was a taxi waiting at the roadside, and Micky called to the man. There was a slight cold drizzle of 148 rain falling as he held open the door. He would have followed but she stopped him. “I should like to go alone, if you don’t mind.”
He looked up, and for a moment he saw her face in the light of the taxi lamp; such a white, quivering face it was.
“Marie!...” said Micky in a choked voice, but she waved him away.
He stood there on the kerb till the taxi had whirled out of sight, and once again he asked himself desperately if it were all worth while, if he were not throwing away the real thing for a chimera.
There was probably a no more unhappy man in London at that moment than Micky Mellowes.