“No, Fanny ... you are going to live.” “I ... and Edith?” “_You_....” She walked with mouth tear-brimmed and open out of her fancied words. She saw about her with relentless eyes, felt with relentless feet, this hard pavement, these hard houses, hard white sky. Out of the deep scene came now upon her, as her mouth shut, clearer and more solid than the stone city his last words: “You, Fanny ... not Edith, _you_ ... are to live.” Clear feet carried body erect through the stone city. Mother worlds in blood poured from her, leaving white feet, white body, while the soul of Fanny swooned in a ruthless knowledge. _FOUR_ PAVEMENT OVER EARTH A man and a woman walked this day with Autumn burning all about them. The sun lay in thin cloud. The trees burst. “I have found out, Fanny,” he said. She was so shorter than he and her steps swifter than his long lurches. She felt him from his broad brown halfshoes upward ... big fleshly man, somehow lithe, somehow gentle like song above his crude-rhythming feet. And his hairy great hands she felt--as when they were on her body like a little child’s, so helpless yearning, so imperious. “I knew I should find out if I gave myself the space to: that’s why I brought you up here. We came yesterday. This morning I know ... that I have known since the day you came into the Office asking for a job.” She laughed.--I can laugh! “O I see your thought: ‘That’s the conventional phrase.’” “ ...from Christopher Johns!” “Maybe he’s been so durn unconventional these forty years because he hadn’t found himself. Maybe he feels, now he can look at last straight at you and himself and understand, it’d be good to be conventional: like rolling in warm blankets which the hard days’ work has paid for.” She felt the dissonance of her feet striking the rutted road beside his. “There must have been a frost last night.” “Look at that maple! It’s a blazing red, because there was a frost.” She looked. He was keeping step. “I mean it, Fanny. It’s nearly two years since I’ve known you ... nearly two years you’ve worked for me ... one year we’re--well--lovers though I fear the word for the rare wonder you have given me--why, why? But now it is a blossom of knowing, a whole Spring of knowing, woman! There has been Sylvia _Frau_, there has been Sadie. I chuck ’em both, and when it is done we marry.” “Jonathan! I want you to walk quiet ... miles and miles beside me quiet, today all day--do you understand? I am listening for something.” She knew he would, clutching his stick behind him in two fists. Two years ... they tramped ... two years....