The long Ulster twilight had set in, the twilight of bats, gray-blue, utterly peaceful ... the little chiming of the sea.... Even the wind was still.... All things drowsed, like a dog before the fire, relaxed but not asleep.... Beneath her feet the turf was firm ... beneath that the hush-een-husho of the purple Moyle.... Soon there would be a moon and her servants would saddle Shane's horse for him and he would ride home in the Antrim moonlight, eighteen miles of grim road with the friendly moon above him, and the singing Moyle on his left hand, and on his right the purple glens.... And the shadows ... the delicate tracery of the ash-tree, and the tall rowans, and the massive blue shadows of the cliffs ... a golden and silver land.... A very sweet silence had fallen between them, as if music had ceased and become restful color.... They watched the quiet swan....
"I am a little afraid to leave Tusa hErin," she said suddenly and softly, as though thinking aloud.... "I am like a nun who has been in a convent.... She is lost in the open world.... Will I ever again find a place like Tusa hErin?"
"Granya, are you selling Tusa hErin?"
"I have sold it, Shane."
"I am sorry," was all he could say. A little silence, and he could feel her smiling through the dusk.
"You never ask any questions, Shane?"
"It never occurs to me to ask them, Granya. If any one wants to tell me a thing, I know they will, and if they don't why should I intrude?"
"I should like to tell you why I sold Tusa hErin. But I cannot. It is my own secret."
He nodded in the dusk: "I understand."
She turned to him slowly. Her sweet dark head was like some fragrant shrub.... Her low soft voice had so much life to it....