“I’m glad you said that,” Micky answered, “because now you’ll come along and have that supper with me. There’s a little café quite near here that I know. If we are both miserable, we can at least be miserable together.”
Something told him that this girl was at the end of her tether; that she was desperate, and his first casual curiosity concerning her deepened in the most surprising fashion.
He felt in some inexplicable way that a curtain had been lifted from a phase of life hitherto hidden from him; as if he were standing on the threshold of a new world, where women only weep for something real and tragic, not just butterfly tears of petulance like the women of his own class.
The girl was silent for a moment; then suddenly she laughed, a hard little laugh of recklessness.
“Very well,” she said. “I suppose I may as well.”
Micky was infinitely relieved; somehow he had not really thought that she would allow him to accompany her.
They walked along for a few steps in silence. Once or twice the cat, tucked under the girl’s arm, gave a faint mieow of protest, and Micky smiled to himself in the darkness.
It was the cat that seemed to give such a real touch of pathos to the whole adventure, he thought, and wondered why. He looked down at her deprecatingly.
“Let me carry it,” he suggested.