But John Willie no longer wondered that he should struggle thus with a conversation when there were rills and rivulets of talk waiting for him at home at Llanyglo. She was not mute; there were a thousand communications wrapped up in her very presence. She ran over with unspoken meanings, babbled for all her silence. Her hair, nearly all cool green now, as the black water was cool green; that unlearned balance of her head; the curve of her cheek; those lovely, despotic forearms—whether that least member of her whole sweet parliament, her tongue, moved or was still, there was more of approach in all of these than in June's "Fancy! Do tell me! And how's So-and-So getting on?" These were the weeds, the dusty groundsel of words; Ynys was her own vocabulary, every part of her a part of speech....
And the theme? The theme that every corpuscle of her announced as she sat there, listlessly tossing snail-shells and twigs and rolled-up leaves and blades of grass into the water?
John Willie was a very ordinary young man. In Liverpool, his eyes would have seen very little but Liverpool. Perhaps that was why, in Glyn Iago, he had not the perfect freedom of sun and air, of growing and dying things, and things growing again, of moving water, of that essential speech with this creature at his side that at the last has no need of words. For, for good and ill mingled, they make shames and fears in the Liverpools of the land, and codes, and suppressions, and the apparatus of Conscience, and it is too late for you, too late for me, too late for John Willie, to unmake them. John Willie had begun by questioning Ynys; now, far more searchingly, Ynys was questioning him.
And the end of her questioning of him was that he would have called himself a cur had he as much as thought of not doing "the decent thing...."
Indeed it was precisely because he thought so resolutely and intently of doing that thing that by and by he rose. It was only half-past four; he could be home in two, or two-and-a-half hours; and for that matter he was not in any hurry to get home. He was in a hurry now only because Ynys spoke too much. She gave him no rest from her close inquisition. He must answer those questions that she so pressed home or take himself quickly off, to add (as he knew) the fuel of thought to that flame with which he already burned.
Therefore, again standing by her, he asked her one more question only.
"You will be here to-morrow?" he said, his eyes anxiously on her face.
What his answer would have been had she said "No," or had he not believed that nod of her head, it is useless to ask.
He left her still tossing the debris into the water.