Anne smiled sadly.
“Don’t you think, Thomas, that the memories of the road we have trodden together are as strong a tie as love?”
He again drew his hand over his left breast pocket and then let it slip quickly to his waist as if it had been done accidentally.
This movement caused Anne some anxiety. She remembered that it had become frequent lately. She thought no more of her troubles.
“What is the matter with you? What has happened?” She turned back the frilly silk shade of the lamp with a rapid movement.
They looked at each other as if they had not met for a very long time.... When did their ways part? When, for what word, for what silence? Neither of them remembered. It must have been long ago and since then they had walked through life side by side, without each other.
Anne leaned over Thomas. It seemed to her that they had met at last on the dark road and that she saw, through Uncle Sebastian’s story, into the face she had never understood.
“You have suffered too, Thomas....” And as if he were her child she took his head tenderly between her hands. She pressed it to her bosom and gently stroked his grey-sprinkled hair, his wrinkles. She wanted to ask forgiveness of Thomas for the marks left by their sad misunderstandings. Every touch of her hand demolished one of the barriers that had stood between them and had obstructed their vision.
“I have not been kind to you,” he said sadly, “I passed from your side because I thought of nothing but of my craving for my land.”
“And I thought something quite different,” answered Anne, in a whisper. “You said nothing and I am not one of those who can question. We both kept silent and that was our misfortune. I see now that silence can only cover things, but cannot efface them. Dear God, why did you not tell me your heart’s desire? Why did you not speak while we were still rich?”