“It’s seeing the light that matters most, I think,” said Judy.  “We believe the same though I know I’ve got it, and you only think you have!  But it’s the thinking that is all important.  The mystery to me is how anyone can be satisfied with the phenomena of this world alone as an answer to the riddle.”

“It’s not so much of a mystery to me.  The world is so very beautiful that it can stand instead of human love, so why not, to some people, instead of Divine love also?  The beauty of it is what I have chiefly lived by.  It could for very long thrill me to the exclusion of everything else.”

“And now?” asked Judith.

“Now?  Now I am old that has been young, and still I cannot answer you that.  I believe these airmen tell you of air pockets they come to, holes in the atmosphere, where their machines drop, drop....  I think I am in an air pocket, a hole between the guiding winds of the spirit ... one is too occupied in not dropping when in those holes to think of anything else.  Action is the best thing, which is why I am now going to leave you to sow the four-acre.”

He got up, slowly and painfully, though he stood as erect as ever once he was upon his feet.  He stood a moment looking at Judith.

“Judy, d’you ever have those times when you feel something is going to happen?” he asked, “when you expect something to come round the corner, so to speak, at every moment.  One so often had it in one’s youth—­one woke with it every morning:  I don’t mean that, but the expectation of some one thing that is in the air so near one that any moment it may break into actuality?”

“I never have it now, my dear, but I know what you mean.  Why?  Have you got it?”

“Yes.”

“Is it about anything particular you are feeling it?”

“No, no; my uncanny vision doesn’t go as far as that, I’m afraid.”

“Dare I murmur indigestion?” she asked, with a gentle chuckle, hunching herself into her shawls.

“You may murmur, but I scorn you as a materialist and one who isn’t even genuine.  I go to my sowing, but you’ll see if this old man is not justified of his dreams.”  He left her, and she watched him across the lawn with the detached affection of the old in her eyes; then she took up, not her knitting or her writing-pad, but the little book of devotions that lay in a fold of her shawl, and started to read, her lips moving slightly but soundlessly.

In the four-acre field there was a strong wind blowing that for days had been drying the turned earth to powder.  The soil, so rich of hue when freshly turned, now showed a pale drab, dry and crumbling beneath the feet, while every step stirred up the fine particles and made them blow about like smoke.