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‘What?’ he said, in fear.

‘Choose your girl, Coddy. You’ve got to choose her now. And you’ll get your neck broken if you play any more of your tricks, my boy. You’re settled now.’

There was a pause. Again he averted his face. He was cunning in his overthrow. He did not give in to them really–no, not if they tore him to bits.

‘All right, then,’ he said, ‘I choose Annie.’ His voice was strange and full of malice. Annie let go of him as if he had been a hot coal.

‘He’s chosen Annie!’ said the girls in chorus.

‘Me!’ cried Annie. She was still kneeling, but away from him. He was still lying prostrate, with averted face. The girls grouped uneasily around.

‘Me!’ repeated Annie, with a terrible bitter accent.

Then she got up, drawing away from him with strange disgust and bitterness.

‘I wouldn’t touch him,’ she said.

But her face quivered with a kind of agony, she seemed as if she would fall. The other girls turned aside. He remained lying on the floor, with his torn clothes and bleeding, averted face.

‘Oh, if he’s chosen–‘ said Polly.

‘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.

Annie silently offered the key to the girls. Nora unlocked the door.

‘Tit for tat, old man,’ she said. ‘Show yourself a man, and don’t bear a grudge.’

But without a word or sign he had opened the door and gone, his face closed, his head dropped.

‘That’ll learn him,’ said Laura.

‘Coddy!’ said Nora.

‘Shut up, for God’s sake!’ cried Annie fiercely, as if in torture.

‘Well, I’m about ready to go, Polly. Look sharp!’ said Muriel.

The girls were all anxious to be off. They were tidying themselves hurriedly, with mute, stupefied faces.