"Is that you?"
"Is it you?" the boy's voice came hoarse through the dark. "I thought you weren't coming. I waited an hour for you yesterday on the Rock."
"I couldn't help it. I oughn't to be here now, and I almost didn't come, but I thought we'd have to-night. Neil, you hurt my hand. Be nice to me."
She was standing close beside him now, and they could see each other's faces, white and strange in the dark, but the boy's looked whiter, and his breath came oddly, in irregular gasps. He held both her hands in his, but he did not bend down to her, nor kiss her.
"What makes you look so queer? I don't like you. Be nice to me." There was something terribly wrong with the smug little phrases, or with any words at all just then, there in the heart of the silent dark, and facing the strangeness of the boy's eyes; words failed her suddenly, and she pulled her hands away, and hid her face in them. "I won't go with you—I'll go home, if you aren't nice to me—if——"
"You can't go home now." There was something in the boy's voice that was like the fierce clasp of his hands, something from which it was not so easy to escape. "It might be better if you hadn't come, better for both of us, but you can't go back now. It's too late. Yes, we'll have to-night. Get in, Judith."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Get in, Judith."
"I won't go. You can't make me."