He had sat up, and was looking at her.—"You mean—that you won't go back at all?" he said.
"Indeed I think I cannot go back," she answered; and her imperfect speech left it uncertain whether indeed she meant that she was still unresolved, or whether to her, who had not been able to endure a night in Llanyglo, a return to Liverpool would be more than she could bear.
"But—but—what would you do?" he asked.
"I stay here lit-tle longer, and then I get wick-ker from Dafydd Dafis, and mend chairs, like my mother."
"But—but——" It was so new to his experience. "You mean you'd just go from place to place?"
"If I go to Liverpool I die," she answered.
John Willie, torturing himself over this long afterwards, could never decide what that subtle yet essential change was that came over their relationship from that moment. It was quite contrary to any change that might have been expected. But for that sullen "No, damn it," he might have been conscious of hardier impulses as the term of her holiday approached; but very curiously, it was now that he learned that it had no term that he felt those hardier stirrings. It was exactly as if, with little time to spare, he had wasted time, and now, with time enough before him, he must lose no time. Perhaps it was also that growing wonder what she must think of fishing expeditions without fishing.
Or—or—could it be that that sweet clamour of her person had all along shown patient intention, and that he, he only, had been dull?...
But, more quickly than he had thought of charging her with this—(he was only an ordinary young man)—he had to acquit her again. Certainly she had not decided not to leave because, staying, she saw him daily. She merely dreaded towns and disliked those over-glorious waxen cenotaphs that were raised to the memory of the humble flowers she knew. And he was still sure that at an unguarded movement from him she would have fled days ago. At an unguarded movement she would fly now. He had what he had only on the condition that, by comparison with his hunger, it was and must remain nothing.... What then? Must he come, and still come, until the wraiths of the mists began to drive over a dead and sodden Delyn, and those tossing blankets of the mountains became hidden in rain, and the wood of Glyn Iago became brown and thin, and the stream an icy torrent, and Llanyglo itself as empty as a piece of old honeycomb?
He did not know, nor did he know how, without risking all, to ascertain.