now. I never want to belong to
anybody. If I did, it wouldn't be you."

"Judith, stop! You'll be sorry for this."

"If I am, it's no business of yours. It's nobody's business but mine."

"You'll be sorry," the boy muttered again, and this time the girl did
not contradict him or answer. Her shrill little burst of defiance was
over, and with it the sullen resentment that had crimsoned the boy's
face as he listened began to die away. He was rebuffed and thrown back
upon himself. His heart would not open so easily again. It would be a
long time before it opened at all. But he did not resent this. He only
looked baffled and puzzled and miserable, and the girl staring mutely at
him from the doorway with big, starved eyes, looked miserable, too. She
would be angry again. All the hurt pride and anger that had been
gathering in her heart for a year was not to be relieved by an
unrehearsed burst of speech. It had been sleeping in her heart. It was
all awake now, and she would be angrier with the boy and the world than
ever before, angrier and more reckless. But just now her anger was
blotted out and she was only miserable. In the gloom of the office there
was something curiously alike about the two tragic young faces.

The two were alone together there, but they had never been farther
apart. There was a whole world between them, a lonely world, where
people all speak different languages, and understand each other only by
a miracle, and most of them are so used to being alone that they forget
they once had a moment of first realizing it. But when it was upon them,
it was a bitter moment. These two young creatures were both living
through it now. They looked at each other blankly, all antagonism gone.

"You won't listen?" said the boy wonderingly, admitting defeat. "You
won't forgive me?"

"No," said Judith pitifully. "I can't."

Neil looked at her forlornly, but did not contest this. He came meekly
forward, not trying to touch her again, and opened the door for her.

"Well, good-night," he said. "Good-night, dear."

"Good-bye," Judith said. "Good-bye, Neil."

Then, jerking her flaunting hat into adjustment with trembling fingers,
and shaking out her befrilled skirts with a poor little imitation of her
earlier airs and graces, she slipped out into the corridor, groped for
the dusty stair rail, and clutched at it with a new disregard for her
immaculate whiteness, and disappeared down the stairs.

In the street below the