“But you will come back from there again?”
“Come back?” The man stopped for an instant. The glitter died away in his eyes. “I can go there no more. Ille has ceased to be ours.”
Anne scarcely heard him. She knew only that he would not go away, that he would stay here. Illey smiled again. He smiled in a queer, painful way. The girl noticed this.
“What is the matter? Nothing.... Why do I ask? I thought a twig had hit you.”
“Trees won’t hurt me.”
He spoke of the oaks of Ille. They stood in front of the house. They soughed in the wind. They told each other something that the children could not understand, just like the grown-ups when they talked Latin in the drawing-room. Beyond the gate of the courtyard, a row of poplars swayed in the wind. The poplars moved like plumes. At the bottom of the garden there was a cherry tree with a swing on it. The ropes had cut into the bark of a branch and left their mark forever.
The face of Thomas Illey became younger as he spoke. He looked at Anne.
“In the glen where we first met, there is a cherry tree too and it resembles the one with the swing. Here is another.”
He pointed to a tree with his stick.
Till then they had apparently been eager to speak, as if wanting to keep in touch though their ways had been wide apart. Now, however, their voices failed; they had reached the present. The dense bushes hid the other two from their sight. They perceived that they were alone.