She had caught herself wishing—half wishing—she did not quite know what—that she too had taken off her glove.
Her colour lasted for half-a-minute; then, perhaps because of the colour, her voice became matter-of-fact. She glanced up at him.
"I'm sorry you failed in your examination," she said.
Louie was tall, but his head was clear and away above hers. He looked down, earnest, anxious, smiling, all three.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "Why should it?" he added.
Louie had thought that it had mattered a great deal, but she was still a little bewildered. Even out of the answer to the riddle another seemed to have sprung already. She laughed a little.
"Oh—only that one doesn't like to be beaten," she said.
This too he seemed to give profound yet (if such a thing may be) absentminded attention.
"Is anybody ever beaten?" he asked slowly. "I mean, unless they deserve to be?"
Archie and Evie Soames had just overtaken them again, laughing together, as, hand in hand, they took a running glide towards the door. His remark came oddly from a doubly beaten man. What then did he call a beating?... She looked covertly at the two hands again.