The Web and the Rock - Thomas Wolfe

by Thomas Wolfe

  When I got your letter--" he winced, and she went on quickly--"when I saw the writing on the letter, I knew it was from you. I knew again that I had found you and that I had always known you, and that it would always be the same. Yesterday, when I came to meet you, when I saw you, and you were walking away, the thought came to me you were leaving me. It was as if a knife had been turned and twisted in the heart, and then you turned, and you were there again, and then we were together and there were just you and I. And that's the way it is, and I have always known you, and we are together. There's nothing to explain."

  A heavy door had slammed below, and for a moment there was the lean and lonely sound of footsteps walking away upon an empty pavement. Then there was nothing, just the hushed, still silence in the house. They stood there, holding each other by the hands, as they had done the day before, and this time there was nothing more to say, as if that stormy meeting of the day before had somehow erased, wiped out for each of them, all confusion, all constraint, the need of any further explanation. They stood there with held hands and looked each other in the eye, and knew that there was nothing more to say.

  Then they came together and he put his arms around her and she put her arms around his neck and they kissed each other on the mouth.

  The End