Thomas could not remember how it was at first that he desired the girl. He simply wanted her, like the perfume of the woods, the soft meadows under his feet. His inherited man-conscience did not reprove him. He did not think there was any sin, any unfaithfulness in it, for he did not love this girl. He really believed that he did not wrong Anne or deprive her of anything to which she attached any importance.
He leaned again out of the window. He looked up to the sky. He would see it to-morrow above the woods.... Then he reached for his hat. A rare event with him, he longed to hear some gipsy music. He wanted to be solitary, somewhere where the fiddle played for him alone.
He hesitated before Anne’s door. Should he go in? Perhaps she was still asleep....
His steps sounded in the sunshine room. Anne jumped up. If Thomas were to open the door she would throw herself into his arms ... but the steps passed by.
She started to run after him, then stopped wearily before the threshold. She would abase herself uselessly. And as she stood there she remembered something. A dream. A desolated strange street. One solitary person at the furthest end. Thomas ... and she runs after him, but the distance does not become less. The street becomes longer. Thomas seems always further and further away and she cannot reach him....
She thought of her girlhood, the time full of promises. Was this to be their realization? Would everything remain forever like this? Would she and Thomas never come together again? Live with each other and look at each other and remain strangers?
She shuddered as though she were cold.
Then she noticed that for a long time someone had been ringing the front door bell. Who could it be? The old friends came no more to her. Thomas was taciturn with them too. They may have thought it conceit and all stayed away. The relations of the Illey family were avoided by Anne. The voice of Bertha Bajmoczy stood between her and the descendants of the old landlords.
A knock at the door. A lamp was burning in the corridor and the shape of a man appeared in the opening.
It was Adam Walter.