“Around the hill?” the man said and then his voice grew soft and he smoothed that lip of his with his big soft hand and smiled and said, “But show me, goodwife!” He fixed his eyes on her steadily now and openly and his gaze had power to move her somehow and she put down her hoe and went with him, following after him as women do when they walk with men. The sun beat down on them as they went and the earth was warm beneath their feet and green and soft with grass. Suddenly as she walked the woman felt her blood grow all sweet and languorous in her with the hot sun. And without knowing why, it gave her some deep pleasure to look at the man who walked ahead of her, at his strong pale neck, shining with sweat, at his body moving in the long smooth robe of summer stuff, at his feet in white clean hose and black shoes of cloth. And she went silently on her bare feet and she came near to him and caught some fragrance from him, too strong for perfume, some compound of man’s blood and flesh and sweat. When she caught it in her nostrils she was stirred with longing and it was such a longing she grew frightened of herself and of what she might do, and she cried out faltering, and standing still upon the grassy path, “I have forgot something for my old mother!” and when he turned and looked at her, she faltered out again thickly, her whole body suddenly hot and weak, “I have forgot a thing I had to do--” and she turned from him and walked as quickly as she could and left him there staring after her. Straight she went to her house and she crept across the threshold and none noticed her, for everyone lay sleeping. The heat of the day had grown heavier as the afternoon wore on. Across the way the cousin’s wife sat sleeping, her mouth ajar, and the last babe sleeping at her breast. Here the old grandmother slept too, her head drooped and her nose upon her chin, and her clothes slipped to her waist still as she had sat in the sun. The girl had come out of the close room and lay curled against a cool stone for a pillow and she slept, and the younger lad lay naked and stretched to his full length beneath the willow tree, asleep. The very day had changed. It was grown darker and more still and full of deeper and more burning heat. Great clouds loomed swollen, black and monstrous, up from the hills. But they shone silver-edged, luminous from some strange inner light. Even the sound of any insect, the call of any bird, was stilled in the vast hot silence of that day.