Sometimes at sunset, go, the two of them, down to the river. Sunday beyond the wall into green country, into sere autumn country, into winter country. Mix and not mix with those about them, live and let live, keeping observation as near as possible to ebb tide. Live--let live! Live--let live! In this time the herb found some growing room. Away from the smith’s street they saw the able king go by with his able men, the queen with her ladies. They saw the cardinal and his train. They heard of a Lollard burned, and they went not there; of a sorceress burned and they went not there. They went somewhat silently and softly that day. So long as they ran not foul of some one’s earthly ambition or his jealousy or his fear, there was going room. Once they heard a street preacher mourning that the time was so lax. A great time, an active time, but lax, lax! What was this New Learning and crying that Authority was within? Every day, somewhere, a monk broke from cloister and a priest began to babble. For the bookmen, they were writing perdition! Differers springing up like weeds, laughter rising, folk prying into vain knowledge, conceiving a thing called “freedom.” Clink, clink, clink in the street of the smith. Diccon and Alice Dawn. Out of blind feeling there rose, they knew not just when nor how, desire for that light which is comprehension. “Tell me--” “Tell me--” Breadth by breadth, work of the day done, or on holidays, they unrolled the bale of old life and regarded the figures, the outer figures and the figures of thought and feeling. Each grew to be to the other a vast and deep and fortunate object of study. She would say, “When you were in France, tell me--” or “What like was thy mother?” And he, “Tell me, Morgen, of thy childhood and thy girlhood.” Her childhood became his and his became hers. The like with girlhood and boyhood. They learned, orb of orb, ocean of ocean, sharing and growing richer by the sharing. “I remember” and “I remember.” “I was a young girl, just over childness. I was dancing. My father and mother watched. I do not know if they were truly my father and mother, but I called them that. They watched me and they watched the crowd watching. They always did that. If the crowd did not grow warm, then afterwards in the booth they beat me. Oh, they beat me sore! So I always thought _into_ the crowd as it were and willed it as hard as I might, ‘Oh, love my dancing! Oh, love to look at me!’ I thought it so hard that sometimes it seemed that the crowd and I were one, and I beat their flame upward so that they, too, were dancing and liking it. But I remember that day something beat my flame upward, too, far upward and very wide! And the very earth and world was dancing, whirling and rising like a golden ball in air, and great figures sat around, laughing and applauding and crying, ‘You will do! You will do!’”