"I never said anything about twenty years, OR sixty."
"You did, though. Sixty! why, in sixty years we'd have been very nearly old. So to punish you I pretended to go to sleep, and I saw you take your hair down. It was so beautiful. You've seen the threads spiders spin on blackened furze that gypsies have set fire to? Your hair was like that. You were angry with those lovely lines of silver, and you wanted to get rid of them. I nearly called to you to stop hurting what I loved so much, but you stopped of yourself, as though you had heard me before I called."
"I was ashamed of myself," whispered Helen. "I was ashamed of trying to be again what I was the only other time you saw me."
"You've never stopped being that, child," said Peter.
"You knew, didn't you, why it was I had stayed on at the mill? You knew what it was that held me, and why I could never leave it?"
"Yes, I knew. It held you because it held me too. I wondered if you'd tell me that."
"I longed to, but I couldn't. I've never been able to tell you things. And I never shall."
"Oh, child, don't look so troubled. You've always told me things and always will. Do you think it's with our tongues we tell each other things? What can words ever tell? They only circle round the truth like birds flying in the sun. The light bathes their flight, yet they are millions of miles away from the light they fly in. We listen to each other's words, but we watch each other's eyes."
"Some people half-shut their eyes, Peter."
"Some people, Helen, can't shut their eyes at all. Your eyes will never stop telling me things. And the strangest thing about them is that looking into them is like being able to see in the dark. They are darkness, not light. And in darkness dreams are born. When I look into your eyes I go into your dream."