'Yes,' he said, 'for always. What can I say to you that you will remember?'
'Only say that you can never forget the night by the river.'
'I can never forget it.'
Something in his words fell final, like a fate.
She turned now to her husband. The stage was already slowing up.
'Is this the county seat? I have found out quite a great deal. I will tell you more about the coal lands as we drive. He is an interesting man.'
Suddenly, from having been intently upon them, my attention became aware of a familiar sound, the thudding hundred-hoofed sound of an approaching herd; I had been so absorbed in the strange world of the other happening that I had not known of their approach. Almost suddenly they were about us, black and brown backs, spreading horns, broad wet noses, massive foreheads.
The driver looked down through the little hole reassuringly.
'Just wait till they get past. They’re on their way to the stockyards!'
We waited, the four of us, huddled together, with a strange kind of intimacy, it seemed, in the 'bus, while the trampling mass of driven dumb creatures surged and swayed around us, and finally struggled painfully by, each crowding the other, on their way to death. The woman watched them with eyes in which there met fear and pity.