Lilian glanced up at them. "If only we could keep there! By their habitations are men known. A house ought to be a sort of resting place. No more. Once you elaborate it, it becomes a prison, with hard labour attached." "But where does all this lead?" pondered the Doctor, half falling in with her mood. "Why not make some things permanent and as good as they can be?" "Because they are only part of ourselves, only so many additions to the human organism, extra bits of brain. We're slowly discovering that. Humanity daren't be permanent, except in its fundamentals, and all the fundamentals have to do with living and being. Just think what would happen if the blood in your veins became permanent?" "Death," said the Doctor, speaking from knowledge rather than from symbolical conviction. "Well, then," resumed Lilian, triumphantly, "isn't all this possession of things, all this wanting to have and keep, a sort of death, beginning from the extremities? Wouldn't it be awful if the human body didn't change, if we got fixed in some way, didn't grow old or lose our hair, or have influenza?" The Doctor paused in his walk. How strange that Lilian should say that! It almost seemed as though she must have heard about the Clockwork man! And then they both stopped, and at the same moment saw Rose and Arthur seated on the stile. "Let's go back," whispered Lilian, and they turned and retraced their steps. The sight of the lovers sealed their lips. Doctor Allingham struggled for a few moments with a strange sense of bigness wanting to escape. Almost it was a physical sensation; as though the nervous energy in his brain had begun to flow independently of the controls that usually guided it through the channels graven by knowledge and experience. It was Lilian who spoke next, and there was a note of pain in her voice. "Oh, why are we troubled like this? Why can't we be like _them_? We shan't ever get any nearer happiness this way. We shan't ever be better than those two. We've simply got a few more thoughts, a little more knowledge--and it may be quite the wrong kind of knowledge." "Then why--" began the Doctor, as though this begged the whole question. "Oh, wait," said Lilian, "I had to have it out with you. I had to talk of these things, as though talking's any good! I couldn't let you just take me for granted. Don't you see? I suppose all this talk between us is nothing but an extension of the age-long process of mating. I'm just like the primitive woman running away from her man." The Doctor paused in his walk and took hold of her elbows. "Does that mean that you've been playing with me all this time?"