It was quite dark and Alexander was still thinking of the boys, when it
occurred to him that the train must be nearing Allway. In going to his
new bridge at Moorlock he had always to pass through Allway. The train
stopped at Allway Mills, then wound two miles up the river, and then the
hollow sound under his feet told Bartley that he was on his first bridge
again. The bridge seemed longer than it had ever seemed before, and he
was glad when he felt the beat of the wheels on the solid roadbed again.
He did not like coming and going across that bridge, or remembering the
man who built it. And was he, indeed, the same man who used to walk that
bridge at night, promising such things to himself and to the stars? And
yet, he could remember it all so well: the quiet hills sleeping in the
moonlight, the slender skeleton of the bridge reaching out into the
river, and up yonder, alone on the hill, the big white house; upstairs,
in Winifred's window, the light that told him she was still awake and
still thinking of him. And after the light went out he walked alone,
taking the heavens into his confidence, unable to tear himself away from
the white magic of the night, unwilling to sleep because longing was so
sweet to him, and because, for the first time since first the hills were
hung with moonlight, there was a lover in the world. And always there
was the sound of the rushing water underneath, the sound which, more
than anything else, meant death; the wearing away of things under the
impact of physical forces which men could direct but never circumvent or
diminish.
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