"You look beautiful. You are beautiful," says Laurie, before Amy leaves with Fred Vaughn.

Maybe it's the way he says it, or the way he looks at her when he says it. Maybe it's the way he corrects his own tone to sound like he is stating an irrefutable fact.

It could be a thousand other things. Amy isn't exactly in the right frame of mind to soul-search and name precisely what it is.

But those words cut her, the way she hopes her words at the New Year's party cut him. Theodore Lawrence, the eternally charming, gets told off by a lowly former neighbor that she despises him. Amy March, the eternally insecure, gets informed by the man of her childhood fantasies that he thinks she is inherently worthy of some kind of adoration.

It's shocking, and world-altering.

She blinks.

Outside, Fred hollers. Her future beckons.

She spares another glance at Laurie, whose face is basically begging her not to go.

But how can she not - after having told him in such confident terms that she was ready to sell her heart for money? How can she defy the poets with her words, and not her actions?

Amy March is a lot of things, but she is not a hypocrite.

"Thank you," she takes in the compliment with a square of her shoulders.

"Fred Vaughn is a lucky man," Laurie adds before she's out the door. She pauses with her fingers on the handle.

She closes her eyes, tears threatening, and turns.

"Because he's rich?" She spits.

"That's only part of it." Laurie talks with his hands in his pockets - ever cocky, ever assured - even as he sports a glint of vulnerability in his haunted eyes.

Here stands a boy who has spent so much of his life having everything he's ever wanted that one single rejection was enough to topple him.

A girl who's grown up as the youngest of four, who has lived on hand-me-downs her entire life even as she yearns for the finger things, has a different kind of resilience bred into her.

Perhaps she can't blame Laurie for his fragility, but she most certainly wants to blame him for the way he's been licking his wounds.

"Stop feeling bad for yourself, Laurie," she speaks with less bite today, even if with equal censure.

"Who says I am?"

"Your eyes do, and your hands do, and your entire life does." Amy steps towards him, Fred forgotten for the moment. She swallows harshly. "There are many of us out there trying to make the most of what we have, and I find it a little offensive that you are attributing it all to 'luck.'"

"Isn't he though?" Laurie tilts his chin upwards, like he's also interested in defying the poets. "Fred Vaughn, one of two twins, one of four siblings - dull, plain, and over-privileged. Yet somehow he manages to capture the attention of a woman as alluring as yourself. How can I not call it 'luck'?"

Amy narrows her eyes. She knows what she's chosen.

And it feels a little harrowing to be questioned over exactly what she knows she has chosen.

She sighs deeply. "Not all of us can be so wonderful on our own, Laurie."

"But you are."

And there he is again - teetering between friendly and flirtatious. It's a dangerous place, as dangerous as the thin ice upon which she once fell.

More sounds come from outside.

Amy squares herself again. "I have to go."

Laurie catches her by the wrist before she does.

He kisses her hand. "Enjoy your day, mademoiselle."

She nods, fights her blush, and goes.