“Thomas,” she whispered, as if to recall him.
Illey smiled inattentively. He was still reading the letter. Anne’s face became grave and cold. The tenderness which had till then flowed bootlessly from her shrank back painfully into her heart.
“No, don’t go away. Come here. Read this....”
But Anne would not go nearer him. She held her head rigidly erect. After the vain inclination to tenderness she hoped to regain the balance in this way.
“It doesn’t matter, Thomas,” and animosity sounded in her voice, “after all I don’t know those people of yours.”
“Why do you speak like that?” He looked at her reproachfully. Again Anne’s voice baffled the hope in his soul, with which he thought of Ille, which still gained, against his will, the upper hand over him.... If he were to tell her everything, if he explained to her that everything belonging to Ille was grown to his heart, that he was craving for his land ... would she understand? The words shaped themselves so intensely in his mind that he nearly heard them sound. But they seemed abasing, as if they were begging. He felt that he could never utter them.
In that moment Anne saw her husband’s countenance hard and frigid.
“Why are you angry, Thomas?” Her eyes wandered to the letter from Ille. “Don’t you understand? It will all be empty talk. All this is so strange to me.”
“You are right!” Illey gave a short reproachful laugh. It dawned on him suddenly that Anne was strange to all that which lived so vividly in his blood and his past. Strange, and perhaps she wanted to remain so.
While they were silent it seemed to both of them that they had drawn further apart from each other, though neither of them had moved. Then it was Thomas who turned away. Anne looked after him.