"I suppose you will."
"You won't mind too much?"
"What call would I have to mind? Who am I? What am I?"
He laughed again, the same hard and bitter laugh, and struck out faster, gripping her hands hard, so that it hurt, but looking away from her across the dead, even white of the trackless snow. There was a pain not to be comforted or reached in his beautiful eyes. It had nothing to do with her.
"Neil, wouldn't you care at all?" she said jealously.
"Care?"
"If I married Willard?"
"Oh, yes."
"Neil, do you love me?"
He did not answer or seem to hear, and now Judith gave up asking questions. Carried along at his side in silence, she listened to the muffled creak of the skates on the snow-covered ice, hushed by the steady and sleepy sound of it, half closing her eyes. His left arm was behind her shoulders now, to support her, and she could feel it there, warm and strong. Breathing when he breathed, her heart beating in time with his, swinging far to right and left, tense with the stroke or yielding deliciously in the recovery, caught in the rhythm of it as if some force outside them both were carrying them on like one, and not two, and would never let them go, Judith yet felt far away from him.