“No,” interrupted Hester, munching her biscuit audibly; “it isn’t worth it.”
“Once upon a time we should both have thought it was,” answered the young girl. “But when a thing like friendship’s gone—it’s gone, that’s all, and there’s nothing more to be said about it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so silly, my dear!” exclaimed Hester, who, having swallowed the remains of the ginger-snap, suddenly realized that she might at least bury her intimacy with a protest to the effect that it was not dead. “You really go on as though we were lovers, and I had betrayed you. In the first place it doesn’t follow, because we’re grown up and not exactly what we used to be, that there’s no friendship between us. We can go on just the same as ever, even if we talk differently and gush less, and we can see just as much of each other as we always did. You’ve got some idea or other into your head about my being cold, because I’m sleepy and dull to-day. Probably the next time we meet it will be just the opposite, and you’ll think me too gushing.”
So long as Hester had made no serious pretence of anything more than she felt, confining herself more or less to generalities and vaguely saying that she desired no break, Katharine had remained calm, but something in the last speech seemed to ring outrageously false, and the blood slowly rose to her throat and ebbed again without reaching her cheeks.
“Don’t pretend!” she exclaimed. “We’ve got to get at the truth to-day, if we’re ever to get at it at all.”
Hester raised her beautiful eyebrows, as delicately and finely marked as though they had been drawn with pen and ink.
“My dear child!” she answered, with real or affected surprise. “Don’t fly into little pink rages like that.”
“I’m not in a rage,” protested Katharine. “And if I were, I shouldn’t be pink—I never am. But I don’t want you to pretend things you don’t feel. We’ve never pretended much with each other, and I don’t want to begin now. It’s over and done for. Let’s make up our minds to it and be sensible. I don’t see that there’s anything else to be done. But don’t let’s pretend things. I hate that.”
“Not half so much as I do, my dear,” said Hester, airily, as though to close the discussion. “I don’t see the slightest good in talking about it any more. You’ve got it into your head that I’ve changed. If you believe it, you know it, for Mr. Griggs says that—”
“Do leave Mr. Griggs alone!” cried Katharine, irritably. “It isn’t a mere idea, either. You said we’d outgrown each other. I’m not conscious of having grown a head taller in the last three weeks. But so far as talking about it goes, you’re quite right. Only—” her voice changed again and took a gentler tone—“let’s part friends, Hester, for the sake of all that has been.”