Explore "The Return" by Walter de la Mare on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
She came out into the sunlight, and they went through the little gate together. She walked quickly, without speaking, over the bridge, past a little cottage whose hollyhocks leaned fading above its low flint wall. Skirting a field of stubble, she struck into a wood by a path that ran steeply up the hillside. And by and by they came to a glen where the woodmen of a score of years ago had felled the trees, leaving a green hollow of saplings in the midst of their towering neighbours.
"There," she said, holding out her hand to him, "now we are alone. Just six hours or so -- and then the sun will be there," she pointed to the treetops to the west, "and then you will have to go; for good, for good -- you your way, and I mine. What a tangle -- a tangle is this life of ours. Could I have dreamt we should ever be talking like this, you and I? Friends of an hour. What will you think of me? Does it matter? Don't speak. Say nothing -- poor face, poor hands. If only there were something to look to -- to pray to! " She bent over his hand and pressed it to her breast. "What worlds we've seen together, you and I. And then -- another parting."