'Alred?'

“Alred?” Matilda asked softly after a while.

“Mmmm?”

“What did you just do?”

“Mmmmhmm?” he asked, trying to rouse himself.

“What did you just do?” she repeated, mumbling around his lips as he tried to kiss her.

'What did you just do?'

A tendril of apprehension began to curl and twist its way up from the pit of his stomach towards his heart.

“I suppose if you can ask, you already know,” he whispered, but he hid his face in her neck.

“Weren’t you paying attention?”

“I always pay attention.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, trying to squirm away to where she could look into his face. “Did you try to?”

'Did you try to?'

“I didn’t try not to,” he said.

“Alred—”

“Hush, Matilda,” he said, regretting it, hoping she would go to sleep and forget about it…

“No!” She slipped her hands beneath his shoulders and pushed him off of her. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to do to me!”

'I don't understand what you're trying to do to me!'

“What I’m—Matilda, I don’t like the way you put it.”

“Well?”

“Forgive me, my beauty,” he said, reaching out a hand to touch her face in the gloom. “I should have spoken to you first. Suddenly it seemed like a good idea.”

“Suddenly! I don’t doubt!” She was beginning to pant.

'Suddenly! I don't doubt!'

“Matilda,” he said softly, trying to calm her with the calmness in his voice, but regret and despair were writhing in his stomach, and it was all he could do to keep the tears down.

“I should never have let you touch me again at all!”

“Don’t!” he cried, stricken to the heart.

“Get off of me,” she said, squirming away from him.

'Get off of me.'

She curled up around her knees on the far edge of the bed, and her back stood against him like a white wall gleaming up out of the shadows. Only her dark hair still tended towards him, spread out behind her from her pillow onto his.

Her back stood against him like a white wall gleaming up out of the shadows.

After her breathing had slowed again, and a long time yet after that, he finally dared to creep closer to her and lift the ends of her hair and drape them over his face, and then at last he could let the tears come. They burned his eyes and cheek, hot because he could not cry out. It was all he could do to breathe around the pain at his heart.

It was all he could do to breathe around the pain at his heart.