"How dare you laugh at me. I hate you!" Judith's voice came hoarse and unrecognizable.
A hand caught blindly at the reins; another hand closed over it. Then there was silence again in the buggy, broken by panting sounds and little sobs. At the end of it Judith, forced back into her corner and held there, was really crying now, with hysterical sobs that hurt, and hot tears that hurt, too.
"Let me go," she panted. "I hate you! You've got to let me go."
"I'm going home. I'm going to get out and walk home."
"I'd walk a hundred miles to get away from you."
"You'd have to walk farther to do that." The dry little laugh cut through the dark again, and Judith struck furiously at the arm that held her.
"I don't care." The boy's voice sounded light and dry, like his laugh. "I don't care. Kiss me."
"I won't! I won't! I'll never speak to you again. I'll never forgive you."
"Lying to me--fooling me; taking me up and dropping me like Everard does to women.... You're no better than he is. You're one of his crowd, but you're through with them.... Lying to me, when you do care. You do."
Little bursts of confused speech, all they had breath for and more, disconnected, not always understood, not always articulate, but always angry, came from them, with intervals of silent, panting struggle between. The two young creatures in the buggy were struggling in earnest now. The struggle was clumsy, like most really significant ones; sudden and clumsy and blind. The two figures swayed aimlessly back and forth. The boy and girl were both on their feet now. The boy had dropped the reins. Both arms held the girl. Her pinioned arms fought to free themselves.
"Judith, you don't hate me. Say it--say it."
[Illustration: "'_Judith, you don't hate me? Say it--say it_'"]
The two shadowy figures were like one now, but the girl's arms were free, pushing the boy away, striking at him impotently.
"You needn't say it. I know. You had to come to-night. You couldn't stay away. You don't hate me. You never will. You couldn't. I'm crazy about you. You're the only thing that matters, if we should die the next minute. Everything's all wrong, and it's not my fault or yours. Everything's wrong, and this is wrong, too, but I don't care and you don't. Do you? Do you?"