oor the
level rays of sunset poured in, shining on the floor. A grey hen
appeared stepping swiftly in the doorway, pecking, and the light
through her comb and her wattles made an oriflamme tossed here
and there, as she went, her grey body was like a ghost.

Anna, watching, threw scraps of bread, and she felt the child
flame within her. She seemed to remember again forgotten,
burning, far-off things.

"Where was I born, mother?" she asked.

"In London."

"And was my father"--she spoke of him as if he were
merely a strange name: she could never connect herself with
him--"was he dark?"

"He had dark-brown hair and dark eyes and a fresh colouring.
He went bald, rather bald, when he was quite young," replied her
mother, also as if telling a tale which was just old
imagination.

"Was he good-looking?"

"Yes--he was very good-looking--rather small. I
have never seen an Englishman who looked like him."

"Why?"

"He was"--the mother made a quick, running movement with
her hands--"his figure was alive and changing--it was
never fixed. He was not in the least steady--like a running
stream."

It flashed over the youth--Anna too was like a running
stream. Instantly he was in love with her again.

Tom Brangwen was frightened. His heart always filled with
fear, fear of the unknown, when he heard his women speak of
their bygone men as of strangers they had known in passing and
had taken leave of again.

In the room, there came a silence and a singleness over all
their hearts. They were separate people with separate destinies.
Why should they seek each to lay violent hands of claim on the
other?

The young people went home as a sharp little moon was setting
in the dusk of spring. Tufts of trees hovered in the upper air,
the little church pricked up shadowily at the top of the hill,
the earth was a dark blue shadow.

She put her hand lightly on his arm, out of her far distance.
And out of the distance, he felt her touch him. They walked on,
hand in hand, along opposite horizons, touching across the dusk.
There was a sound of thrushes calling in the dark blue
twilight.

"I think we are going to have an infant, Bill," she said,
from far off.

He trembled, and his fingers tightened on hers.

"Why?" he asked, his heart beating. "You don't know?"

"I do," she said.

They continued without saying any more, walking along
opposite horizons, hand in hand across the intervening space,
two separate people. And he tr