Young People's Pride by Stephen Vincent Benet

It was with some nightmare surprise that Oliver on waking regarded his / tidy cell. Then he remembered and in spite of the fact that yesterday / evening with all that belonged to it kept hurting wherever it was that / most of him lived with the stiff repeating ache of a nerve struck again / and again by the same soft hammer, he couldn't help laughing a little. / The popular college remedy for disprized love had always been an / instantaneous mingling of conflicting alcohols -- calling a large / policeman a big blue boob seemed to produce the same desired result of / bringing one to one's senses by first taking one completely out of them / without the revolving stomach and fuzzed mind of the first instance. He / tried to think of yesterday evening airily. Silly children quarreling / about things that didn't matter at all. Of course Nancy should have the / job if she wanted -- of course he'd apologize, apologize like Ecclesiastes / even for being alive at all if it was necessary -- and then everything / would be _all_ right, just all right and fixed. But the airy attitude / somehow failed to comfort -- it was a little too much like trying to / shuffle a soft-shoe clog on a new grave. Nancy _had_ been unreasonable. / Nancy _had_ said or hadn't denied that she wasn't sure she loved him any / more. He _had_ released her from the engagement and told her good-by. / He stared at the facts -- they sprang up in front of him like choking / thorns -- thorns he had to clear away with his hands before he could even / touch Nancy again. Was he sure -- even now? All the airiness dropped from / him like a clown's false face. As he thought of what would happen if / Nancy had really meant it about not loving him, it seemed to him that / somebody had taken away the pit of his stomach and left nothing in its / place but air.

Anyhow the first thing to do was to get out of this place -- he examined / the neat bars in the door approvingly and wondered how the devil you / acted when you wanted to be let out. There wasn't any way of opening / a conversation about it with no one to talk to -- and the corridor was / merely a length of empty steel -- and, damn it, his train left at Ten / Seven and he had to see Nancy and explain everything in the world before / it left -- and if he didn't get back to New York in time he might lose his / job. There must be some way of explaining to the people in charge that / he hadn't done anything but kid a policeman -- that he must get out.