She was staring at him now; her face was white and incredulous.
"If you--if you think I'm going to believe that----" she began, in a high, unnatural voice. She stopped; she seemed to realise all at once that he was speaking the truth. She leaned towards him. Her breath came in broken gasps.
"Those letters!" she said shrilly. "Whose letters? They were from him--they were from him--weren't they from him?" she asked hoarsely.
Better to hurt her now, he told himself, than to let her go on to worse pain and humiliation.
There was a tragic silence; then she asked again, in a whisper--
A wave of crimson flooded Micky's white face. He dropped his head in his hands as if he could not bear to meet her eyes.
A long moment of silence followed Micky's broken confession. He dared not look at Esther, though she was staring at him, staring hard, with a curious sort of wonderment in her grey eyes. Then all at once she began to laugh, a laugh which held no real mirth, only incredulity.
For a second they stared at one another; then Micky said hoarsely--
"You don't believe me"; and then again, more slowly: "You mean that you--don't believe--me?"
"It was clever of you--to think of such an excuse," she said unevenly.
"It's the truth; I swear it if I never speak again. I know now that I must have been out of my mind to attempt such a thing, but it has only seemed impossible since you showed me how little you thought of me. I wrote those letters--every one of them. I----"
In the excitement of the moment neither of them had noticed that the train had reached its destination and was slowly stopping.
A voluble porter had already wrenched open the door and was imploring monsieur to accept his services; it was impossible to say any more to Esther.
Micky followed her out on to the platform; he felt that the last shred of his patience and tenderness had been killed.
She did not believe him--whatever he said she would never believe him; it was useless to waste his breath; he might as well give up and let her go her own way; perhaps a sharp lesson would teach her better and more quickly than all his love had been able to do.
He was dispirited and hungry, and hunger alone makes a man angry. He looked at the girl for whose sake he had raced all these miles of wild-goose chase, and a boorish longing to hurt her, to let her suffer rose in his heart.