"Izu Dancer"

The story goes into a lot of inner change within the narrator and characters, and I believe it revolves around the theme of "finding home". Finding home as in where do we belong and the people that need us. I feel that it reflects current society where everybody is to an extent lonely in their own way, and they are going at their pace searching for a place to call home and people to return to. The narrator at one point tries to be part of the family when he took off his student cap and put on a hunting hat, I feel like he thought he found people he belonged with. But he felt a sense of sadness as he watch them perform and he only could stay in his inn room. Ultimately the more he stayed with the family, he felt like he didn't belong here, therefore he put his student cap back on and head back to Tokyo.

Question: At the end Kaoru was at the pier seeing the narrator off, but she never said a single word besides nodding. Why's that? is it because "goodbye"'s are hard to say?