ned you so? What you heard out here? That's all that frightened
you, isn't it? Isn't it? But what made you come here alone like this?
Didn't you know---- Oh, Judith----"

He stopped and looked down at her, saying nothing, but his eyes were
troubled and dark with questions that he did not dare to ask. There was
no answer to them in Judith's eyes, only blank fear. As Neil looked, the
fear in Judith's eyes was reflected in his, creeping into them and
taking possession there.

"Oh, Judith," he whispered miserably. "Oh, Judith."

Judith seemed to have heard what he said to her from far away, and to be
only faintly puzzled by it, not interested or touched. Her eyes kept
their secrets under his questioning eyes. They defied him. She was not
like his little lost sweet-heart found again, but a stranger and an
enemy, one of the people he hated, people who intrigued and lied, but
were out of his reach and above him, and were all his enemies.

The boy's world was upsetting. Nothing that had happened to him in that
room or ever had happened to him before had shaken it like that minute
of doubt that he lived through in silence, with the strain of it showing
in his pale face, and Charlie's voice echoing half heard in his ears. He
drew back from Judith slightly as they stood. He was trembling. Judith's
face was a blur of white before his eyes, then he could not see it--and
then, as suddenly as it had come, his black minute was over.

"Take me away. I don't want to stay where he is any more. Is he dead?"
Judith said, and she slipped her hand into Neil's.

Judith's voice was as lifeless and strange as before, and the hand in
his was cold, but it was Judith's own little clinging hand, and the
boy's hand closed on it tight. He stood still, feeling it in his, and
holding it as if the poor little cold hand could give him back all his
strength again. He looked round him at the dim room and its motionless
owner and Charlie as if he were seeing them clearly for the first time.
He was not angry with Charlie any longer. He was not angry at all. He
drew a deep, sobbing breath of relief, dropped his dark head suddenly
and awkwardly toward Judith's unresponsive hand and kissed it, and then
very gently let it go.

"Judith, you're you," he said, "just you, no matter what happens, and
nothing else matters; nothing in the world, as long as you are you."

Judith only smiled her faint half smile at him, as if she guessed that
some crisis had come