"I—I must be gitting back home."
Alice rose too, and for a moment he was surprised that she did not try to keep him; instead, she said:
"It's late."
He moved a step or two towards the door, and suddenly she added in a low broken voice:
"But not too late."
The floor seemed to rise towards him, and the star in the window to dance down into Castweasel woods and up again.
Alice stood in the middle of the room, her face bloomed with dusk and firelight, her hands stretched out towards him....
There was silence, in which a coal fell. She still stood with her arms outstretched; he knew that she was calling him—as no woman had ever called him—with all that of herself which was in his heart, part of his own being.
"Reuben."
"Alice."