“Don’t cry––don’t; I can’t bear it,” he said hoarsely. He raised her hand to his lips. She had taken off her gloves and her fingers felt like ice. He chafed them gently between his own. She still wore the cheap little ring which Ashton had given her months ago.
She let her hand lie passively in his. Perhaps she was too miserable to remember that it was Micky, and only realised that there was something kind and comforting in his touch. Presently her sobs quieted. She wiped the tears from her face and brushed back her disordered hair.
Micky got up and took down the supper basket he had managed to get at the station. There was a small thermos of hot coffee. He poured some out and made her drink it. If he had expected her to refuse he was agreeably disappointed. She obeyed apathetically; she even ate some sandwiches.
Micky was ravenous himself, but he would not touch a thing till she had finished.
“You’d be much more comfortable if you put your feet up on the seat and tried to sleep,” he said presently. “You can have my coat as well as the rug. Your hands are like ice.”
He took off his coat as he spoke and laid it over her.
“I’m afraid we’ve got a long journey yet,” he said ruefully. “If you could get some sleep.”
She turned her head away and closed her eyes.
She looked very young and appealing in the depressing light of the carriage.
Micky sat looking at her in silence. She cared so little for him that she had even forgotten her anger against him; nothing he could do or say really mattered 238 to her, she was not sufficiently interested in him to even trouble to hate him for long.