illy was motionless and inscrutable like a shadow.

"Does it, Aaron!" he said, in a colorless voice.

"Yes. What else is there to it?" Aaron sounded testy.

"Why," said Lilly at last, "there's something. I agree, it's true what
you say about me. But there's a bit of something else. There's just a
bit of something in me, I think, which ISN'T a man running into a pub
for a drink--"

"And what--?"

The question fell into the twilight like a drop of water falling down a
deep shaft into a well.

"I think a man may come into possession of his own soul at last--as
the Buddhists teach--but without ceasing to love, or even to hate. One
loves, one hates--but somewhere beyond it all, one understands, and
possesses one's soul in patience and in peace--"

"Yes," said Aaron slowly, "while you only stand and talk about it.
But when you've got no chance to talk about it--and when you've got to
live--you don't possess your soul, neither in patience nor in peace,
but any devil that likes possesses you and does what it likes with you,
while you fridge yourself and fray yourself out like a worn rag."

"I don't care," said Lilly, "I'm learning to possess my soul in patience
and in peace, and I know it. And it isn't a negative Nirvana either. And
if Tanny possesses her own soul in patience and peace as well--and if in
this we understand each other at last--then there we are, together
and apart at the same time, and free of each other, and eternally
inseparable. I have my Nirvana--and I have it all to myself. But more
than that. It coincides with her Nirvana."

"Ah, yes," said Aaron. "But I don't understand all that word-splitting."

"I do, though. You learn to be quite alone, and possess your own soul
in isolation--and at the same time, to be perfectly WITH someone
else--that's all I ask."

"Sort of sit on a mountain top, back to back with somebody else, like a
couple of idols."

"No--because it isn't a case of sitting--or a case of back to back. It's
what you get to after a lot of fighting and a lot of sensual fulfilment.
And it never does away with the fighting and with the sensual passion.
It flowers on top of them, and it would never flower save on top of
them."

"What wouldn't?"

"The possessing one's own soul--and the being together with someone else
in silence, beyond speech."

"And you've got them?"

"I've got a BIT of the real quietness inside me."

"So has a dog on a mat."

"So I believe, too."

"Or a man