"Nothing."
Willard detached himself from the railings and regarded his friend, suddenly breathless with surprise, and deeply grieved. Nothing. The word, harmless in itself, had been spoken so that it hit him like an actual blow, straight from the shoulder. Neil, shifting so that the light showed his face, was returning his look with the sudden, unreasoning anger that we feel toward little sounds that beat their slow way into our consciousness at night, to irritate us unendurably at last.
"Go," he urged, "go along to Halloran's. Go anywhere."
"Well, what do you know about that?" began Willard, offended, and then forgave him. There was a look in Neil's pale face that commanded forgiveness. It was pale and strained with a trouble that had nothing to do with Willard, and Willard was respectful and inarticulate before it.
"That's all right," Willard muttered, "that will be all right. I'll go."
Neil took no notice of this promise. Up in the hall the waltz had swelled to a high, light-hearted climax, heady and strained, like the sudden excitements that sweep a crowd. It came clear through the open windows, making one last appeal to the boy below to come up and be part of what was there. And just then a small closed car swept down through the empty square and stopped. Two men stepped out, and paused in the doorway under the red-shaded light.
One was the Colonel's secretary, waiting on the step beyond range of the light, a tall, shadowy figure, and the other, who stood with the light on his face, was Colonel Everard.
He was still pale from his week of illness, but his keen eyes and clear-cut profile were more effective for that. He stood listening to the sounds from upstairs, and he smiled as he listened. He turned at last and looked out across the square as if he could feel Neil's eyes upon him and were returning their look, and then turned away and disappeared up the stairs.
"Neil," Willard was announcing uneasily, "I think a lot of you. I'd do a lot for you. If you're in wrong, any way, if——"
Willard broke off, rebuffed. Neil did not even look at him. He stood staring at the lighted doorway where the Colonel had stood and smiled, as if he could still see him there. He was a creature beyond Willard's world, as he looked, but unaccountably fascinating to Willard. Willard regarded him in awed silence.