I did not pursue the subject, for I saw it had no interest for Katherine. Besides, I wanted to be quiet. I thought if we sat in silence, if I held her hand; above all, if we sat in silence close together, her arms about me, my cheek against her cheek, the past might swim up into the present, and we should know. But instead of that we began to talk, to talk of things that did not matter, until, by and by, we got up to return home. CHAPTER X I stayed in the house all the evening, but I could not read, and so I sat down to write to Katherine. I wrote for more than an hour, though I was very doubtful whether, in the end, I should post my letter. It was the first time in my life I had ever written to anybody. Of course I cannot remember now what I said: I can remember the sense of it, or the nonsense, possibly, but not how I expressed it. Very badly, I suppose, for I tore my first attempt up, and began another, over which I must have spent an even longer time, since, to finish it, I was obliged to get up and light the lamp. When I went out to the post it was quite dark, and immediately after I had dropped my letter in the box I had a strong desire to get it back again. Why had I been in such a hurry? I should have kept it till morning. Then, as I pictured Katherine reading it, a thrill of pleasure swept through my timidity. I did not go home, but strolled, instead, over the golf-links in the direction of the sea. At such an hour they were absolutely deserted, and the pale sand-hills, stretching away in the moonlight and beside a dark waste of water, wore an unfamiliar, a slightly weird aspect, suggestive of some desolate lunar landscape. I wandered on, utterly oblivious to time, till I found a comfortable spot between two of these hills, on a gentle slope that was almost like a couch. I was filled with a passionate sense of life, and lying there, with the long thin sapless grass about me and above me, and the soft white powdery sand beneath, I could look out over the sea, and feel myself perfectly alone. The water was a dark mass under the moon, darker than the beach, darker than the sky, but not so dark as the Mourne Mountains, which rose away on my left in smooth, bold, black curves.