He rose and went to the cupboard, taking out a bowl and a basket of
potatoes. He sat down again, paring the potatoes. His busy activity
annoyed Aaron.

"But what's the good of going to Malta? Shall YOU be any different in
yourself, in another place? You'll be the same there as you are here."

"How am I here?"

"Why, you're all the time grinding yourself against something inside
you. You're never free. You're never content. You never stop chafing."

Lilly dipped his potato into the water, and cut out the eyes carefully.
Then he cut it in two, and dropped it in the clean water of the second
bowl. He had not expected this criticism.

"Perhaps I don't," said he.

"Then what's the use of going somewhere else? You won't change
yourself."

"I may in the end," said Lilly.

"You'll be yourself, whether it's Malta or London," said Aaron.

"There's a doom for me," laughed Lilly. The water on the fire was
boiling. He rose and threw in salt, then dropped in the potatoes with
little plops. "There there are lots of mes. I'm not only just one
proposition. A new place brings out a new thing in a man. Otherwise
you'd have stayed in your old place with your family."

"The man in the middle of you doesn't change," said Aaron.

"Do you find it so?" said Lilly.

"Ay. Every time."

"Then what's to be done?"

"Nothing, as far as I can see. You get as much amusement out of life as
possible, and there's the end of it."

"All right then, I'll get the amusement."

"Ay, all right then," said Aaron. "But there isn't anything wonderful
about it. You talk as if you were doing something special. You aren't.
You're no more than a man who drops into a pub for a drink, to liven
himself up a bit. Only you give it a lot of names, and make out as if
you were looking for the philosopher's stone, or something like that.
When you're only killing time like the rest of folks, before time kills
you."

Lilly did not answer. It was not yet seven o'clock, but the sky was
dark. Aaron sat in the firelight. Even the saucepan on the fire was
silent. Darkness, silence, the firelight in the upper room, and the two
men together.

"It isn't quite true," said Lilly, leaning on the mantelpiece and
staring down into the fire.

"Where isn't it? You talk, and you make a man believe you've got
something he hasn't got? But where is it, when it comes to? What have
you got, more than me or Jim Bricknell! Only a bigger choice of words,
it seems to me."

L