Her small, white-coated figure was only dimly to be seen in the dark of the street; the group in the shadow of the trees was harder to see, but it moved; a horse pawed the ground impatiently, the boy in the buggy leaned forward and spoke to him. Then Judith started uncertainly toward him, and spoke softly, in the arrogant phrasing of lovers, to whom there is only one "you" in the world:
"Is it you?" the boy's voice came hoarse through the dark. "I thought you weren't coming. I waited an hour for you yesterday on the Rock."
"I couldn't help it. I oughn't to be here now, and I almost didn't come, but I thought we'd have to-night. Neil, you hurt my hand. Be nice to me."
She was standing close beside him now, and they could see each other's faces, white and strange in the dark, but the boy's looked whiter, and his breath came oddly, in irregular gasps. He held both her hands in his, but he did not bend down to her, nor kiss her.
"What makes you look so queer? I don't like you. Be nice to me." There was something terribly wrong with the smug little phrases, or with any words at all just then, there in the heart of the silent dark, and facing the strangeness of the boy's eyes; words failed her suddenly, and she pulled her hands away, and hid her face in them. "I won't go with you--I'll go home, if you aren't nice to me--if----"
"You can't go home now." There was something in the boy's voice that was like the fierce clasp of his hands, something from which it was not so easy to escape. "It might be better if you hadn't come, better for both of us, but you can't go back now. It's too late. Yes, we'll have to-night. Get in, Judith."
The boy did not answer or move. Boy and buggy and horse--Charlie Brady's ancient chestnut mare, not such a dignified creature by daylight, but high shouldered and mysterious now against the dark of the grove--might all have been part of the surrounding dark, they were so still, and Judith's little white figure was motionless, too.
Judith stood looking up at the boy for one long, silent minute. Such minutes are really longer than other minutes, if you measure them by heartbeats, and how else are you to measure them? Strange, breathless minutes, that settle grave questions irrevocably by the mere fact of their passing, whether you watch them pass with open eyes or are helpless and young and vaguely afraid before them; helpless, but full of the untaught strength of youth, which works miracles without knowing how or why.