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.”

“All right then—­what about it?”

“Well, then, there are only two great dynamic urges in LIFE:  love and power.”

“Love and power?” said Aaron.  “I don’t see power as so very important.”

“You don’t see because you don’t look.  But that’s not the point.  What sort of urge is your urge?  Is it the love urge?”

“I don’t know,” said Aaron.

“Yes, you do.  You know that you have got an urge, don’t you?”

“Yes—­” rather unwillingly Aaron admitted it.

“Well then, what is it?  Is it that you want to love, or to be obeyed?”

“A bit of both.”

“All right—­a bit of both.  And what are you looking for in love?—­A woman whom you can love, and who will love you, out and out and all in all and happy ever after sort of thing?”