und, sometimes it
hesitated, puzzled, sometimes there was the break of a little
laugh. Anna was taken by him. She loved the running flame that
coursed through her as she listened to him. And his mother and
his father became to her two separate people in her life.

For some weeks the youth came frequently, and was received
gladly by them all. He sat amongst them, his dark face glowing,
an eagerness and a touch of derisiveness on his wide mouth,
something grinning and twisted, his eyes always shining like a
bird's, utterly without depth. There was no getting hold of the
fellow, Brangwen irritably thought. He was like a grinning young
tom-cat, that came when he thought he would, and without
cognizance of the other person.

At first the youth had looked towards Tom Brangwen when he
talked; and then he looked towards his aunt, for her
appreciation, valuing it more than his uncle's; and then he
turned to Anna, because from her he got what he wanted, which
was not in the elder people.

So that the two young people, from being always attendant on
the elder, began to draw apart and establish a separate kingdom.
Sometimes Tom Brangwen was irritated. His nephew irritated him.
The lad seemed to him too special, self-contained. His nature
was fierce enough, but too much abstracted, like a separate
thing, like a cat's nature. A cat could lie perfectly peacefully
on the hearthrug whilst its master or mistress writhed in agony
a yard away. It had nothing to do with other people's affairs.
What did the lad really care about anything, save his own
instinctive affairs?

Brangwen was irritated. Nevertheless he liked and respected
his nephew. Mrs. Brangwen was irritated by Anna, who was
suddenly changed, under the influence of the youth. The mother
liked the boy: he was not quite an outsider. But she did not
like her daughter to be so much under the spell.

So that gradually the two young people drew apart, escaped
from the elders, to create a new thing by themselves. He worked
in the garden to propitiate his uncle. He talked churches to
propitiate his aunt. He followed Anna like a shadow: like a
long, persistent, unswerving black shadow he went after the
girl. It irritated Brangwen exceedingly. It exasperated him
beyond bearing, to see the lit-up grin, the cat-grin as he
called it, on his nephew's face.

And Anna had a new reserve, a new independence. Suddenly she
began to act independently of her parents, to live beyond them.