Farre's feet. They were extended fully into the water, as if he had stretcheddownward to it, and the skin looked softer. The long brown toes stretchedapart a little. And his hands, still motionless, seemed longer, the fingersknotted as with arthritis yet powerful, lying spread on the coverlet at hissides. Makali came back ruddy and sweaty from her walk in the summer morning.Her vitality, her vulnerability were infinitely moving and pathetic to Hamidafter his long contemplation of a slow, inexorable toughening, hardening,withdrawal. He said, "Makali-dem, there is no need for you to be here all day.There is nothing to do for him but keep the water-basin full." "So it means nothing to him that ! sit by him," she said, half questioninghalf stating. "I think it does not. Not any more." She nodded. Her gallantry touched him. He longed to help her. "Dema, did he, did anyoneever speak to you about--if this should happen-- There may be ways we can easethe change, things that are traditionally done-- I don't know them. Are therepeople here whom I might ask--Pask and Dyadi--?" "Oh, they'll know what to dowhen the time comes," she said, with an edge in her voice. "They'll see to itthat it's done right. The right way, the old way. You don't have to worryabout that. The doctor doesn't have to bury his patient, after all. The gravediggers do that." "He is not dead." "No. Only blind and deaf and dumb anddoesn't know if I'm in the room or a hundred miles away." She looked up atHamid, a gaze which for some reason embarrassed him. "If I stuck a knife inhis hand would he feel it?" she asked. He chose to take the question as oneof curiosity, desire to know. "The response to any stimulus has grown steadilyless," he said, "and in the last few days it has disappeared. That is,response to any stimulus I've offered." He took up Farre's wrist and pinchedit as hard as he could, though the skin was so tough now and the flesh so drythat he had difficulty doing so. She watched. "He was ticklish," she said.Hamid shook his head. He touched the sole of the long brown foot that restedin the basin of water; there was no withdrawal, no response at all. "So he feels nothing. Nothing hurts him," she said. "I think not." "Luckyhim." Embarrassed again, Hamid bent down to study the wound. He had left offthe bandages, for the slash had closed, leaving a clean seam, and the deepgash had developed a tough lip all round it, a barky ring that was well on theway to sealing it shut. "I could carve my name on him," Makali said, leaningclose to Hamid, and then she bent down over the inert body, kissing andstroking and holding it; her tears running down. When she had wept a while,Hamid went to call the women of the household, and they came gathering roundher full of solace and took her off to an,other room. Left alone, Hamid drewthe sheet back up over Farre's chest; he felt a satisfaction in her havingwept at last, having broken down. Tears were the natural reaction, and thenecessary one. A woman clears her mind by weeping, a woman had told him once. He flicked his thumbnail hard against Farre's shoulder. It was likeflicking the headboard, the night table--his nail stung for a moment. He felta surge of anger against his patient, no patient, no man at all, not any more. Was his own mind clear? Why was he angry with Farre? Could the man helpbeing what he was, or what he was becoming? Hamid went out of the house and walked his circuit, went to his own room to read. Late in the afternoon hewent to the sickroom. No one was there with Farre. He pulled out the chair shehad sat in so many days and nights and sat down. The shadowy silence of theroom soothed his mind. A healing was occurring here: a strange healing, amystery, frightening, but real. Farre had traveled from mortal injury and painto this quietness; had turned from death to this different, this other life,this older life. Was there any wrong in that? Only that he wronged her inleaving her behind, and he must have done that, and more cruelly, if he haddied. Or was the cruelty in his not dying? Hamid was still there pondering,half asleep in the twilit serenity of the room, when Makali came in quietlyand lighted a dim lamp. She wore a loose, light shirt that showed the movementof her full breasts, and her gauze trousers were gathered at the ankle aboveher bare feet; it was a hot night, sultry, the air stagnant on the saltmarshes and the sandy fields of the island. She came around the bedstead.

Hamid started to get up. "No, no, stay. I'm sorry, Hamid-dem. Forgive me.Don't get up. I only wanted to apologize for behaving like a child." "Grief must find its way out," he said. "I hate to cry. Tears empty me. Andpregnancy makes one cry over nothing." "This is a grief worth crying for,dema." "Oh, yes," she said. "If we had loved each other. Then I might havecried that basin full." She spoke with a hard lightness. "But that was overyears ago. He went off to the war to get away from me. This child I carry, itisn't his. He was always cold, always slow. Always what he is now." She lookeddown at the figure in the bed with a quick, strange, challengingglance. "They were right," she said, "half-alive shouldn't marry the living.If your wife was a stick, was a stump, a lump of wood, wouldn't you seek somefriend of flesh and blood? Wouldn't you seek the love of your own kind?" As she spoke she came nearer to Hamid, very near, stooping over him.Her closeness, the movement of her clothing, the warmth and smell of herbody, filled his world suddenly and entirely, and when she laid her hands onhis shoulders he reached up to her, sinking upward into her, pulling her downonto him to drink her body with his mouth, to impale her heavy softness on theaching point of his desire, so lost in her that she had pulled away from himbefore he knew it. She was turning from him, turning to the bed, where with along, creaking groan the stiff body trembled and shook, trying to bend, torise, and the round blank balls of the eyes stared out under liftedeyelids. "There!" Makali cried, breaking free of Hamid's hold, standingtriumphant. "Farre!" The stiff half-lifted arms, the outspread fingerstrembled like branches in the wind. No more than that. Again the deep,cracking, creaking groan from within the rigid body. She huddled up against iton the tilted bed, stroking the face and kissing the unblinking eyes, thelips, the breast, the scarred belly, the lump between the joined,grown-together legs. "Go back now," she murmured, "go back to sleep. Go back,my dear, my own, my love, go back now, now I know, now I know ..." Hamid broke from his paralysis and left the room, the house, striding blindly outinto the luminous midsummer night. He was very angry with her, for using him;presently with himself, for being usable. His outrage began to die away as hewalked. Stopping, seeing where he was, he gave a short, rueful,startled laugh. He had gone astray off the lane, following a path that ledright into the Old Grove, a path he had never taken before. All around him,near and far, the huge trunks of the trees were almost invisible under themassive darkness of their crowns. Here and there the moonlight struck throughthe foliage, making the edges of the leaves silver, pooling like quicksilverin the grass. It was cool under the older trees, windless, perfectlysilent. Harold shivered: "He'll be with you soon," he said to thethick-bodied, huge-armed, deep-rooted, dark presences. "Pask and the othersknow what to do. He'll be here soon. And she'll come here with the baby,summer afternoons, and sit in his shade. Maybe she'll be buried here. At hisroots. But I am not staying here." He was walking as he spoke, back toward thefarmhouse and the quay and the channels through the reeds and the roads thatled inland, north, away. "If you don't mind, I'm on my way, right away... ." The olders stood unmoved as he hurried out from under them and strode down the lane, a dwindling figure, too slight, too quick to be noticed.