He returns via train

And finally, after a brief attempt at looking out the window only, they began to talk. She started talking to him about her fiancee, the interesting things he was learning in the school of medicine. Something of The Origin of Species hung over their conversation. It came out that she was a skeptic rather than a believer He found her very strange. 

Meanwhile, he talked for a while of Jane and his job in the country, working at law. He told her of the fireflies and the trees that shed their powdery puffs into the night sky, slivers of moonlight laying low across the river. Or rather, he evoked them. What he meant to say was that he'd felt a kind of peace in the north that he'd never thought he'd experience elsewhere. He wasn't thinking as he spoke with her that the things he was saying were intimate, rather, she seemed to draw them out of him without any effort in part. He found himself wanting to tell her everything about those nights on the veranda, every last detail because somehow she was managing to convey that she cared that she was deeply interested in the sound of the wind through oaks and the crickets lying in the dry grass. She asked quick and pointed questions, and kept eye contact for longer than he was used to. In the end, he felt wrung out by her, as if her were a wash cloth. 

When they got off the train it was as acquaintances now rather than as strangers. As soon as they parted ways he nearly forgot their entire conversation because all he could think of was Jane. He wanted not to tell her all the things he'd been thinking the past months as he had with Charlotte. What he wanted was to behold her, to stand across a room and watch the way bits of light seemed to cling to bits of stray hair. 

The wind started to kick leaves across the street. A pair of horses dragged a cart across a muddy road. In the distance he could hear the sound of a piano being played, somewhat poorly. He had missed being at home. He'd start by telling her that he missed her, and then he'd tell her that