Yet it seemed to him that what one had been offered might also, in the long run, count a little—anyhow, in the retrospect.
Such an amount seemed to have been now admitted between them that Betty could say, 'We're down on our luck, you and I.... Tommy, I'm horribly sorry.'
The last was pity, and he took it from her now without wincing; that it was 'quite the same' for both of them made it a simple thing to give and take. He gave his in return, gently, now that her position had thus emerged to him.
'I'm sorry, too,' he said.
So their affection for each other put out reaching, groping fingers through the glooming mists of pain that blinded each. As yet that touch could not heal: but it seemed to wait its hour.
Tommy returned to his drawing. Betty sought for and gathered up the coins from the stone floor. Their copper jingling seemed to ring in her soul dully. The beastly thing—to use Tommy's phrase—was that one must oneself throw one's bright metal away. Though it might burn to the touch, the flinging of it away was a wrenching that hurt more. Betty envied Tommy, with the bitterness of his down-bent face before her; her bitterness must of necessity be the deeper, because her bright metal had been laid in her hands, to keep if she would. Also, to throw it away had bruised and hurt not her alone....
Betty's thin, scarred hand covered her lips, steadying them.
'We shall be better soon,' she said to herself. 'We'll play in the streets and smell the sea ... and summer's coming.... We shall be better soon.'
Then she sought a narcotic in literature, and got from the shelf a book of poetry and began to read:
'When you are out alone I hope
You will not meet the antelope....'