“Not without your consent.”
“You came to us strangely,” he went on, “in a strange time, and trouble entered with you.”
“Not of our making,” Herman reminded him, “nor our wishing.”
“We are sensible of that, and also that we had good from you. Therefore”—he looked about on the Outliers and the nudging and whisper of agreement ran from group to group of them—“we wish to give you good in return. We have nothing to give you such as House-Folk value, nothing but your memory of us, which we hope you may hold as lovingly as we do yours.”
“We do so,” said Herman.
“Will you take that memory then, as our gift of parting, so to keep it as the best we have to offer?”
“So to keep it as the best we have to keep,” consented Herman solemnly, and I after him.
“Why then,” said Persilope, “there is nothing more for it but to set you on your way to Broken Tree again, and to wish you Good Friending.”
The good-bys were said very quickly; they came about us with light laughter and good wishes and broke and parted into the wood again. The sun and the spring and the wind out of the south called them. I sent messages to Evarra, who stayed in the wood beyond River Ward to bury Lianth. Trastevera and some others came down the hill with us. When we had traveled rapidly for an hour they showed us the moon-shaped bay and the moon-white curve of the beach around it, and the point of cypress running far into the blue water. Later we could see the white specks of the houses, and then the close shouldering hills and the moss-hung pines, the oaks leaning all one way of the wind, and the sea-blue slopes of ceanothus. As we went our companions slipped from us, melted between sunny space and woody shadow, and mixed with the brown and green of the wood side. Now we saw bright regardful eyes and fingers laid on lips—who knew what men folk might be stirring? And now we felt to right or left the friendly presences. Finally, when we had been walking I do not know how long, suddenly there was only Herman and I in the wood, and no other.
“Herman, Herman!” I said, “they are gone, we shall never see them again.”