There was no word which could express what happened there, on the other side of the street, or if there was one, Anne could not find it. Without a word, she went back to the bed and drew her old sweet smile, like a veil, over her face. She was overwrought, she drew the veil too hard ... and it broke and covered her no more.
Thomas reached for her hand. In that instant he realised the immensity of Anne’s sacrifice. Till now he had faith in himself and believed he could attract his wife’s soul to what he loved. Illness had wrung this hope from him and he felt ashamed, his pride suffered, that he should have been the cause of Anne’s sudden sacrifice.
His dying eyes looked at her earnestly, with boundless love. Anne’s back was turned to the light and while Thomas stroked her hand she spoke of Ille. She planned....
Next day the post brought a little bag. It contained wheat ... golden wheat from Ille. Thomas passed it slowly, pensively, between his fingers and while the source of life flowed in poignant contrast between his ghostly, lean hands, tears came to his eyes.
In these moments, in these days, under the cover of the worn torn smile Anne’s face became old.
Out there, the roof of the old house was already gone and hemmed in between scaffoldings; like a poor old prisoner, the yellow front was waiting for its fate. To Anne’s imagining the house complained behind its wooden cage and knew that it had been so surrounded only to be killed.
The pickaxes set to work. The bricks slid shrieking down a slide from the first floor. Labourers, Slovak girls, came and went on the scaffolding and they too carried bricks on hods.
Every passing day saw the house grow smaller. The labourers tore holes in the walls and left the rest to crumble down. That was the quickest way.
The dull noise went to the marrow, and with every wall something fell to pieces in Anne’s heart. It seemed to her that she became feebler after every crash, that the efforts of generations collapsed in her soul, great old efforts, with which the first Ulwings, the ancient unknown ones, had all carried bricks for the builder—bricks for the house.
She thought of her father. He kept the walls standing. And of Christopher—he began to pull the building down. And now the end had come.