Kipps · Book I · Chapter 1 3 (3/3)

“I will⁠—anyhow,” said Kipps. “You may count on that,” and he tried to make his tones significant.

They looked at one another through a little pause.

“Goodbye,” she said.

Kipps lifted his hat. She turned towards the classroom.

“Well?” said the freckled girl, coming back towards her.

“Nothing,” said Helen. “At least⁠—presently.” And she became very energetic about some scattered tools on a desk.

The freckled girl went out and stood for a moment at the head of the stairs. When she came back she looked very hard at her friend. The incident struck her as important⁠—wonderfully important. It was unassimilable, of course, and absurd, but there it was, the thing that is so cardinal to a girl, the emotion, the subservience, the crowning triumph of her sex. She could not help feeling that Helen took it, on the whole, a little too hardly.