"Sweet children playing in the streets, grow up to become hated by their own kind. And soon they grow to hate themselves!" said Brook, as he turned to Lloyd and Dearborne, then further, "Is that not so?" the room was silent. After a quarter-hour, while she slowly and perfectly wound her yarn into a tight ball, Dearborne finally broke the silence. "You cannot blame the children, my husband! They are all good. Only circumstances change them. The times devour their innocent little souls and burn into their hearts the hatred that grows as they do!" Brook walked about the room and motioned to Lloyd, with his glass if he would like some more wine, and he accepted. He took Lloyd's glass and poured himself and his guest some more wine. He glanced at Dearborne's glass, but she hadn't yet taken a single swallow from it. "I don't blame them, my love. The devil -- the evil -- is in all of them. They discover it during their transitions. Some of these mischievous children discover their good and their evil, and some find it to their advantage, that evil is of more benefit to them. So turns the world." Brook exclaimed to his wife and gulped his wine. He studied her for a few moments, in puzzlement, and wondered why she hadn't touched her wine. Then, as if his thoughts touched hers, she stopped rolling her yarn and put the glass to her precious lips and like a little bird, took a sip. However, Brook saw that she was not enjoying it and he worried that something was wrong, but he didn't pry her with questions. He felt that she would eventually come to him herself, when she found the time to be right for her. Lloyd, on the couch, still peered out the window at the street. He kept an open ear to the exchange between his host and hostess, and he slowly drank his wine. In the distance he noticed some of the farmers irrigating their farm terraces with water, mechanically drawn from the Artesian reservoirs beneath the city. Throughout the evening, from the time the sun had begun to drowse until it finally bedded-down for the night, Brook paced about the room. He was deeply into his thoughts, and he occasionally surveyed his beloved wife, Dearborne, and also his guest Lloyd. Lloyd maintained his stare out the window during this lulling tide of time. Mesmerized by the beauty of this land, he still longed to see Besten again. Brook empathized with Lloyd's sentiment and left him to it until he felt that Lloyd's thoughts, were causing him to brood and Brook did not want to see people, brooding in the house. He recognized that Dearborne was on the verge of breaking under the strain of trying to prevent her own, and he did not want to see Lloyd in a moody state.