"Don't tease."
"I honestly don't know."
"You don't hear one word I'm saying to you."
Judith laughed guiltily. "Then what makes you talk to me?"
"Judith—are we the same as engaged?"
Judith hesitated. "Kissing each other good-night—and all that—is silly. I don't want to. Only sometimes I want to, and then afterward I'm ashamed, and can't understand why. Willard, I don't want to grow up. I don't ever want to. I want things to stay just the way they are. They are—lovely. Oh, Willard——"
She stopped, with tears in her eyes. There had been a real appeal in his earnest young voice, and she had done her best to answer it, painfully thinking out loud, with her heart in her words, making him an authentic confidence. But the confidence was off the point, and he ignored it, pursuing his subject with the concentration which will keep his sex the stronger one, votes for women or no votes for women.
"Are you the same as engaged to me?"
"Will you go home if I say I am?"
"Are you?"