“I don’t know what shape the fox is in,” said Herman, “or what Handel was thinking about when he set those horns playing along with those trumpets, but they suddenly spoke to me as if I’d been destined to hear them, and I’d been waiting for them all my life.”

“It’s the same for me,” she said. “I’m just an insignificant carter of wheat. I beg you, don’t pay any attention to me. What I say is of no importance. But right now I’m full of grandiose ideas with no logical connection, unless they’re akin to these unfenced heaths we’ve been walking through. I’ve never been able to stand still in the middle of such expanses—they stretch away with so much power—without immediately allowing myself the freedom to ponder my most cherished dreams. Thank you for holding my hand. (You see, I don’t know what I’m saying.) And thank you for walking along beside me and not talking about the one thing you’d really like to say.”

“The fact is,” he said, “that I’m pathetically trying to gain some time. But you’re wrong to say you’re nothing but an insignificant carter of wheat. It’s extremely important to transport wheat. The people who wait for it must agree. Give us our daily bread.”

“But give us our daily mountain town too, and Handel’s horns. Give us each day our wide-open spaces. For instance, you—you’re a poet—”

“I’d rather we didn’t talk about that,” he said. “Look, let’s talk about Pitt instead, if you don’t mind. Sorry for calling him by that familiar name.”

“You couldn’t make me happier. But don’t worry. I say you’re a poet like I’d say you have blond or brown hair. It’s a simple observation, as though I were calling you a Lloyd’s insurance agent.”

“I accept the Lloyd’s insurance agent label.”

“When you’re used to living in unbounded spaces, on land or at sea, you’re naturally inclined to come up with grandiose solutions to the problems life poses. Take sailors, for example. But imagine people who live incessantly inside four walls, surrounded by towns that become more and more crowded, towns that are drenched in rain.

“Here, of course, you get swept away by the big line of the horizon—right there in front of us. It comes out of the haze, over there, and runs over there, where it plunges into the sea mists. Look how it glides across, like it possesses a kind of confidence, a certainty it will exist forever. How could we possibly ignore it? And, as long as we have to make use of our minds, how could we possibly stop them from acting the same way? But if you’re boxed in, with the rugs and the fireplace, and the four servants, and the secretaire, and the library, and the files, and the index cards. . . .