The chestnut, darkening into summer, canopied them over; over their heads were its expired candles of blossoms, brown - dessicated stamens were in the dust. Over everything under the tree lay the dusk of nature. Only the cartracks spoke of ever again going or coming; all else had part in the majestic pause, into which words were petering out. This was not so much a solution as a dissolution, a thinning-away of the accumulated hardness of many seasons, estrangeness, dulledness, shame at the waste and loss. A little redemption, even only a little, of loss was felt. The alteration in feeling, during the minutes in which the two had been here, was an event, though followed by a deep vagueness as to what they should in consequence do or say. Impossible is it for persons to be changed when the days they have still to live stay so much the same - as for these two, what could be their hope but survival? Survival seemed more possible now, for having spoken to one another had been an act of love. No word, look or touch were for some time to be needed to add more: instinctively now they rested, almost apart, under the saturating chestnut, with what they knew at work in them slowly. Only kept from slipping from Lilia's lap by the idle hold of one of her hands, the letters were neither more nor less part of the scene than the spent match or the dropped shoe.
A World of Love, Elizabeth Bowen
