men were picking the last acorns under three scrubby oak-trees,
whilst a girl with bare feet drove her two goats and a sheep up from the
water-side towards the women. The girl wore a dress that had been blue,
perhaps indigo, but which had faded to the beautiful lavender-purple
colour which is so common, and which always reminded Lilly of purple
anemones in the south.

The two friends sat in the sun and drank red wine. It was midday. From
the thin, square belfry on the opposite hill the bells had rung. The
old women and the girl squatted under the trees, eating their bread
and figs. The boys were dressing, fluttering into their shirts on the
stream's shingle. A big girl went past, with somebody's dinner tied in
a red kerchief and perched on her head. It was one of the most precious
hours: the hour of pause, noon, and the sun, and the quiet acceptance
of the world. At such a time everything seems to fall into a true
relationship, after the strain of work and of urge.

Aaron looked at Lilly, and saw the same odd, distant look on his face as
on the face of some animal when it lies awake and alert, yet perfectly
at one with its surroundings. It was something quite different from
happiness: an alert enjoyment of rest, an intense and satisfying sense
of centrality. As a dog when it basks in the sun with one eye open and
winking: or a rabbit quite still and wide-eyed, with a faintly-twitching
nose. Not passivity, but alert enjoyment of being central, life-central
in one's own little circumambient world.

They sat thus still--or lay under the trees--for an hour and a half.
Then Lilly paid the bill, and went on.

"What am I going to do this winter, do you think?" Aaron asked.

"What do you want to do?"

"Nay, that's what I want to know."

"Do you want anything? I mean, does something drive you from inside?"

"I can't just rest," said Aaron.

"Can't you settle down to something?--to a job, for instance?"

"I've not found the job I could settle down to, yet," said Aaron.

"Why not?"

"It's just my nature."

"Are you a seeker? Have you got a divine urge, or need?"

"How do I know?" laughed Aaron. "Perhaps I've got a DAMNED urge, at the
bottom of me. I'm sure it's nothing divine."

"Very well then. Now, in life, there are only two great dynamic
urges--do you believe me--?"

"How do I know?" laughed Aaron. "Do you want to be believed?"

"No, I don't care a straw. Only for your own sake, you'd better believe
me."