"Judith, stop! You'll be sorry for this."
"If I am, it's no business of yours. It's nobody's business but mine."
"You'll be sorry," the boy muttered again, and this time the girl did not contradict him or answer. Her shrill little burst of defiance was over, and with it the sullen resentment that had crimsoned the boy's face as he listened began to die away. He was rebuffed and thrown back upon himself. His heart would not open so easily again. It would be a long time before it opened at all. But he did not resent this. He only looked baffled and puzzled and miserable, and the girl staring mutely at him from the doorway with big, starved eyes, looked miserable, too. She would be angry again. All the hurt pride and anger that had been gathering in her heart for a year was not to be relieved by an unrehearsed burst of speech. It had been sleeping in her heart. It was all awake now, and she would be angrier with the boy and the world than ever before, angrier and more reckless. But just now her anger was blotted out and she was only miserable. In the gloom of the office there was something curiously alike about the two tragic young faces.
The two were alone together there, but they had never been farther apart. There was a whole world between them, a lonely world, where people all speak different languages, and understand each other only by a miracle, and most of them are so used to being alone that they forget they once had a moment of first realizing it. But when it was upon them, it was a bitter moment. These two young creatures were both living through it now. They looked at each other blankly, all antagonism gone.
"You won't listen?" said the boy wonderingly, admitting defeat. "You won't forgive me?"
"No," said Judith pitifully. "I can't."
Neil looked at her forlornly, but did not contest this. He came meekly forward, not trying to touch her again, and opened the door for her.
"Well, good-night," he said. "Good-night, dear."
"Good-bye," Judith said. "Good-bye, Neil."
Then, jerking her flaunting hat into adjustment with trembling fingers, and shaking out her befrilled skirts with a poor little imitation of her earlier airs and graces, she slipped out into the corridor, groped for the dusty stair rail, and clutched at it with a new disregard for her immaculate whiteness, and disappeared down the stairs.