He had brought her back home. Languorous and bemused she stepped out upon the bank in the breaking dawn, and turned to look at him beneath her heavy lids. She could not see him clearly, he seemed blurred, far away.
‘Good-bye,’ he said briefly.
‘I’ll see you before you go,’ she said mechanically.
Not that it really mattered now. Time was not any more and he would be with her for ever.
He nodded; and then abruptly turned the canoe down stream again: looked at her once, faintly smiled, waved his hand an instant and went on.
She walked through the waiting, clear pale-coloured garden, into the house, up to her bedroom; stared in the dim glass at her strange face; sank into bed at last.
4
It was on the next evening that she awoke to the realization that Roddy had not come—might not—certainly would not now. He was going away. He, who always found self-expression, explanations, so difficult, would be at a loss to know what to say when he too woke up. He who never made plans would be helpless when it came to making any which should include her too in the future. Last night he had been dumb, he had sighed and sighed, whispered inarticulately: he would find it hard to be the first to break silence, to endeavour to re-establish the balance of real life between them. She would write him a letter, tell him all; yes, she would tell him all. Her love for him need no longer be like a half-shameful secret. If she posted a letter to-night, he would get it to-morrow morning, just before he left.
She wrote:
Roddy, this is to say good-bye once more and to send you all my love till we meet again. I do love you, indeed, in every sort of way, and to any degree you can possibly imagine; and beyond that more, more, more, unimaginably. The more my love for you annihilates me, the more it becomes a sense of inexhaustible power.