For the first few moments he hardly knew what he wrote. It was only when he reached the end of the first page that he seemed to realise with a start what he had done. He looked back at the written lines with something of a shock. There was no beginning to the letter, no date or address; it simply started off as if the pen had been guided by some influence outside himself, some desperate need. "I don't know what you will think when you get this letter. I am writing it because to-night I think I am half mad. I love you so much; there seems nothing in the whole world that counts any more now that I am beginning to understand that I can never have you. Esther, I ask you on my knees to listen to what I have to say. I have tried to keep away from you, to forget you; I've tried to put you out of my heart and persuade myself that I do not care--but it's no use. I love you; I know you care something for me, but I shall love you always. To-night I have done an unpardonable thing for your sake. I explain things so badly. I can only hope that you will understand and try to make some excuse for me. Some one knows we were together in Paris--I need not tell you who. To-night, at a house where I was, he had told several people that you and I had been to Paris together...." Micky had gone on writing rapidly--he seemed to have lost himself in a sea of eloquence; his heart was pleading with the woman he loved through the poor medium of a sheet of unaddressed paper. "It nearly drove me mad to hear you spoken of by him. There was a scene, and I knocked him down ... you will hate me for this, but I would have killed him if they had let me. I told them afterwards that you were my wife--try and understand how I have suffered all these weeks--I told them that we had been married some time, and that it had been kept secret by your own wish. It's only now, when I am more alone and can think clearly, that I see what I have done. You don't care for me, and I have compromised you even more than that man did by his lying insinuations. Tell me what I am to do--anything, anything in the world. My whole life is yours to do with as you will. Be my wife, dear, be my wife...." For a moment the pen faltered, but Micky went on again with an effort. "I will stay in London twenty-four hours for your answer, and then, if I don't hear...." The pen faltered again, and this time finally stopped. CHAPTER XXXVI "The question is," said June critically, looking out of the window to the street where a fine drizzle of rain was falling, "does one, or does one not, wear one's best hat to go out and meet the one and only man one has ever loved?" She turned round and looked at Esther with a little nod. "That's grammar, though you may not think it, my dear," she said. Esther laughed. "I should say one does wear one's best hat," she said decidedly. "Especially seeing what a very charming hat it is."