"Oh, why?"
She kissed him: her hand slipped under his knees; and she drew him close again—and there held him until he lay quiet in her arms.
"We are like the lights on the river," she said. "The river will take us to a place where the lights go different ways."
"We will not go!"
"The river will take us."
The boy was puzzled: he lifted his head, to watch the lights drift past, far below; and he was much troubled by this mystery. She tried to gather his legs in her lap—to hold him as she used to do, when he was a child at her breast; but he was now grown too large for that, and she suffered, again, the familiar pain: a perception of alienation—of inevitable loss.
"When?" he asked.
She let his legs fall. "Soon," she sighed. "When you are older; it won't be long, now. When you are a little wiser; it will be very soon."
"When I am wiser," he pondered, "we must go. What makes me wiser?"
"The wise."