'I don't want him--he can choose again,' said Annie, with the same rather
bitter hopelessness.

'Get up,' said Polly, lifting his shoulder. 'Get up.'

He rose slowly, a strange, ragged, dazed creature. The girls eyed him
from a distance, curiously, furtively, dangerously.

'Who wants him?' cried Laura, roughly.

'Nobody,' they answered, with contempt. Yet each one of them waited for
him to look at her, hoped he would look at her. All except Annie, and
something was broken in her.

He, however, kept his face closed and averted from them all. There was a
silence of the end. He picked up the torn pieces of his tunic, without
knowing what to do with them. The girls stood about uneasily, flushed,
panting, tidying their hair and their dress unconsciously, and watching
him. He looked at none of them. He espied his cap in a corner, and went
and picked it up. He put it on his head, and one of the girls burst into
a shrill, hysteric laugh at the sight he presented. He, however, took no
heed, but went straight to where his overcoat hung on a peg. The girls
moved away from contact with him as if he had been an electric wire. He
put on his coat and buttoned it down. Then he rolled his tunic-rags into
a bundle, and stood before the locked door, dumbly.

'Open the door, somebody,' said Laura.

'Annie's got the key,' said one.