"Yes. What difference does that make? That, or anything? We'd go if we hadn't any money at all. We'd have to. Oh, Judith----"
"You don't know what you're saying. Take me home. What are you laughing at?"
"You. You sounded just like them, then, giving me orders--just like your whole rotten crowd, but you're through with them now, and you're through ordering me about and making a fool of me. I've been afraid to say my soul was my own. It wasn't, I guess. But we're all through with that. We're through, Judith."
"Yes, of course. Of course we're through. It's all right. Everything's all right, Neil dear."
"Everything's all wrong, and I know whose fault it is now: it's your fault. Maybe I only had one chance in a hundred to get on, but one chance is enough, and I was taking it. You made me ashamed to take it. I was ashamed to do the work that was all I could get to do, and I had my head so full of you I couldn't do any work. Maggie's better than I am. She don't sit around with her hands folded and wait for Everard to get tired of her. And the whole town don't laugh at her. The whole town don't know----"
"Neil, I said I was sorry. Please don't."
"You've got the smooth ways of them all, but it's too late for that between us, Judy. Smooth, lying ways."
"We can't go to Wells, Neil dear. What could we do there? Think."
"I'm sick of thinking. I'd get work maybe. I don't know. I don't care. Judith----"
"I'm sick of waiting. I've got nothing to gain by it. I've done all the waiting I could. I've stood all I could. You're the only thing I want in the world, and I couldn't wait for you any longer if I could get you that way--and I wouldn't get you. I'd lose you."
"Not to-night. To-morrow, if you really want me to go. To-morrow, truly."
"You're lying to me, and I'm tired of it."
"That's right. We'll talk straight now. It's time."
"I hate you. Don't touch me. You're going to take me home--you must--and I'm never going to speak to you again. I think you're crazy. But I'm not afraid of you--I'm not afraid."
The low-keyed, hurrying voices broke off abruptly. There was no sound in the buggy but Judith's rapid breathing, more and more like sobs, but no tears came. The two faces that confronted each other were alike in the gloom, white and angry and very young; alike as the faces of enemies are when they measure each other's strength in silence. It was a cruel, tense little silence, but the sound that broke it was more cruel. It was dry and hard and had nothing to do with his own conquering laugh, that the girl knew, but it came from the boy.