She made an effort to lift herself from his arm; then quite suddenly she burst into tears.
The little sound of sobbing broke the spell that seemed, 176 to have held June; she went down on her knees beside her, both arms round the slender, shaking figure.
Micky had risen to his feet. June glanced up at him.
“Go and find the taxi and leave her to me,” she said sharply. The look of suffering in his face hurt her. Micky went out into the cold night bareheaded. He hardly knew what he was doing. He stood for some minutes on the path forgetting why he had come out at all, before some one, jostling against him, brought him back to a sense of time and place.
He went down the road to look for a taxi. When he came back Esther was sitting up, wrapped in her cloak. She was not crying now, but she looked like a child who wants to cry but is determined not to.
June was standing beside her.
“We’re quite ready,” she said. She kept an arm about Esther, and Micky followed them silently.
He saw them into the cab, but did not follow. June asked a sharp question: “Aren’t you coming?”
“No––at least, not if you can manage without me.” His voice sounded unnerved; he looked away from June to where Esther was huddled into a corner beside her, and suddenly, as if urged by an impulse he could not control, he leaned forward, groped for her hand in the darkness, and, bending, kissed it passionately.
A moment later he had stepped back and shut the door.