She dropped the hoe in the patch and went away across the two fields, set upon her path by her thought in the garden. She moved across the ground, more quick than any growing thing her feet passed or trampled, and when she had left the two fields behind she climbed the stony way beside the quarry cliff and went over the rim of the high pasture where her cow grazed. Jasper was at work in Wingate’s field beyond the distant fence, and as she stood on the crest beside the cow, her hand along the animal’s shoulder, the land seemed to reach endlessly away, pasture and thin woodland and stone-crowned hills, until the length and width of it cried back at her. The land surrounded her, lying away in all points, never to be measured in all its strength to surround and enclose and obliterate. Jasper knew that she had come to the crest of the hill for he had left his work and was coming out of his field, over the rail fence and up to the top of the pasture. St Lucy’s tower stood out of the land, the eight crosses evenly set on the eight-crowned turret, risen out of the earth, taken out of the rock of the ground, out of the hard lime, and after a little the bell would sing a tranquil psalm that would run unmoved above the beasts and above the clods, floating off quietly of itself to the sunset. Jasper’s step was quick on the herbs and his shadow came quickly, the dark line of his form on the grass coming timed to the beating of her own life within her breast. As he drew near a smile brightened his face and a look passed between them, growing from tenderness to intimacy until she was merged with him in the deep moments of his last approaching steps. Then she was standing beside him, within his arms, and he began to kiss her and to lead her along the field’s rise toward some thorn trees and off again beside the downward path or back to the summit of the brow. He would come that night and tell her the story of his life and then, if she was of a mind to have him, they would get married. He would come as soon as the night work was done.

She sat beside him on the porch while his story came to her, a story which leaped jerkily from between the quiet intervals when his speech praised her own beauty and goodness or fell away entirely before his fondling and caressing. Henry had stumbled away early to his bed, broken by his day in the field, and Nellie had moved aimlessly about inside the house, her bare steps falling stiffly on the boards before she settled to her sleep. Or Jasper lit his pipe afresh and saw to its drawing, his finger pressing down the tobacco, the light of the match burning for a moment against his face and lighting his eyes. Then she searched the massive planes of his skin for its beauty and searched his eyes, looking quickly away and back. The story was of labour, of wandering from farm to farm, of good seasons and bad, of good luck or evil.