od and nerves and
memory. He sits there selling motor cars, but his people were fighting
men. They fought to get land; they fought to keep it. My mother's people,
the Rodens, were yeoman farmers. That's why my furrow's so straight."

"And that's why you came here?"

"No. That isn't why."

"Aren't you glad you came? Did you ever feel anything like the
peace of it?"

"It's not the peace of it I want, Charlotte,--Jeanne, I mean. It's
the fight. Fighting with things that would kill you if you didn't.
Wounding the earth to sow in it and make it feed you. Ploughing,
Charlotte--Jeanne. Feeling the thrust and the drive through, and the
thing listing over on the slope. Seeing the steel blade shine, and the
long wounds coming in rows, hundreds of wounds, wet and shining."

"What makes you think of wounds?"

"I don't know. I see it like that. Cutting through."

"I don't see it like that one bit. The earth's so kind, so beautiful. And
the hills--look at them, the clean, quiet backs, smoothed with light. You
could stroke them. And the fields, those lovely coloured fans opening and
shutting."

"They're lovely because of what's been done to them. If those hills had
been left to themselves there'd have been nothing on them but trees.
Think of the big fight with the trees, the hacking through, the cutting.
The trunks staggering and falling. You'd begin with a little hole in the
forest like that gap in the belt on the sky-line, and you'd go on hacking
and cutting. You'd go on.... If you didn't those damned trees would come
up round you and jam you between their trunks and crush you to red
pulp.... Supposing this belt of beeches drew in and got tighter and
tighter--No. There's nothing really kind and beautiful on this earth.
Except your face. And even your face--"

"My face?--"

"_Could_ be cruel. But it never will be. Something's happened to it. Some
cruelty. Some damnable cruelty."

"What makes you think so?"

"Every kind and beautiful thing on earth, Jeanne, has been made so by
some cruelty."

"That's all rot. Utter rot. You don't know what you're talking
about.... It's milking time. There's Gwinnie semaphoring. Do you know old
Burton's going to keep us on? He'll pay us wages from this quarter. He
says we were worth our keep from the third day."

"Do you want to stay on here?"

"Rather."

"Very well then, so do I. That settles it."

"Get up," she said, "and come along. Gwinnie's frantic."

He sat up, bowed forw