“And first of all—goodness!” she cried suddenly, pushing him slightly away from her, gazing at him in the darkness; “a thing I never thought of—are you of age?”
“Of age?”
He stood facing her, motionless. He had put out his hand to take hers again, to draw it through his arm once more. But this question startled him, and his hand dropped by his side. Each stood a dark shadow to the other in the dark, staring into each other’s faces, seeing nothing; and Walter’s heart gave a jump that seemed to take it out of his breast.
“Yes, of age. Oh, you fool! oh, you pretender! oh, you boy trying to be a man! You have known it all along, but you have not told me. You are not of age?”
“No,” said the poor boy, humbly. For the first moment he felt no sensation of anger or disappointment, but only the consternation of one who feels the very sky thundering down upon his head, the pillars of the earth falling. “Fool!” did she call him—“pretender!” What did she mean by fool? What did she mean by that tone of sudden indignation—almost fury? He felt beaten down by the sudden storm. Then the instinct of self-defense woke in him. “What have I done?” he said. “I have concealed nothing from you. No, I am not of age—not till October. What has that to do with it;—age can not be counted by mere years.”
“It is, though, in Doctors’ Commons,” she said, with a mocking laugh. “We might have saved ourselves a great deal of trouble and talking nonsense if you had said so at once. Didn’t I tell you you were too young to know what was wanted? Do you think they will give any kind of license to a boy who is under age!”
“I am not a boy,” said Walter, feeling as if she had struck him upon the naked heart, which was throbbing so wildly. “Perhaps I might be before I knew you, but not now, not now! And do you mean to tell me that for a mere punctilio like that—”
“Well, it is a punctilio,” she said, taking his arm suddenly again, her voice dropping into its softer tone. “That is true; nobody thinks anything of it, it is merely a matter of form. Even if you are found out they never do anything to you.”
“Found out in what?”
“In saying you are twenty-one when you are not; for that is what people have to do. It is just a punctilio, as you say. Nobody thinks anything of it. It is only a matter of form.”