I wished I could be a little boy again, and
that my way could end there.
We reached the edge of the field, where our ways parted. I took her hands
and held them against my breast, feeling once more how strong and warm and
good they were, those 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.
BOOK V
Cuzak's Boys
I
I TOLD ANTONIA I would come back, but life intervened, and it was twenty
years before I kept my promise. I heard of her from time to time; that she
married, very soon after I last saw her, a young Bohemian, a cousin of
Anton Jelinek; that they were poor, and had a large family.
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