'We can adjust the means to the ends.'
'We must be sparing of expenses.'
'Will you walk part of the way?'
'I should like it.'
'We shall be longer on the journey.'
'We shall not find it tiresome, I hope.'
'We can say so, if we do.'
'We are not strangers.'
The recurrence of the 'we' had an effect of wedding: it was fatalistic, it would come; but, in truth, there was pleasure in it, and the pleasure was close to consciousness of some guilt when vowing itself innocent.
And, no, they were not strangers; hardly a word could they utter without cutting memory to the quick; their present breath was out of the far past.