brown hands, and remembering how many
kind things they had done for me. I held them
now a long while, over my heart. About us
it was growing darker and darker, and I had
to look hard to see her face, which I meant
always to carry with me; the closest, realest
face, under all the shadows of women's faces,
at the very bottom of my memory.

"I'll come back," I said earnestly, through
the soft, intrusive darkness.

"Perhaps you will" -- I felt rather than
saw her smile. "But even if you don't, you're
here, like my father. So I won't be lonesome."

As I went back alone over that familiar
road, I could almost believe that a boy and
girl ran along beside me, as our shadows used
to do, laughing and whispering to each other
in the grass.

[[365]]

p364 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p365w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p366

v?