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fingers they would twitch out a handful of hay, spit into the hollow, and then stop it up again. One might be tempted to laugh; only if one mixed with them, as Homo did when he was in search of Grigia, one might just as easily start in sudden fright at this crude dignity. But Grigia was seldom among them, and when at last he found her, she would perhaps be crouching in a potato-field, laughing at him. He knew she had nothing on but two petticoats and that the dry earth that was running through her slim, rough fingers was also touching her body. But the thought of it was no longer strange to him. By now his inner being had become curiously familiar with the touch of earth, and perhaps indeed it was not at the time of the hay-harvest at all that he met her in that field: in this life he was leading there was no longer any certainty about time or place.
    The hay-barns were filled. Through the chinks between the boards a silvery light poured in. The hay poured out green light. Under the door was a wide gold border.
    The hay smelt sour—like the Negro drinks that are made of fermented fruits and human saliva. One had only to remember that one was living among savages here, and the next instant one was intoxicated by the heat of this confined space filled to the roof with fermenting hay.
    Hay bears one up in all positions. One can stand in it up to the knees, at once unsure of one's footing and all too firmly held fast. One can lie in it as in the Hand of God, and would gladly wallow in God's Hand like a little dog or a little pig. One may lie obliquely, or almost upright like a saint ascending to heaven in a green cloud.
    Those were bridal days and ascension days.
    But one time Grigia declared it could not go on. He could not bring her to say why. The sharpness round the mouth and the little furrow plumb between the eyes, which before had appeared only with the effort of deciding which would be the nicest barn for their next meeting, now boded ill weather somewhere in the offing. Were they being talked about? But the other women, who did perhaps notice something, were always as smiling as over a thing one is glad to see. There was nothing to be got out of Grigia. She made excuses and was more rarely to be found, and she watched her words as carefully as any mistrustful farmer.
    Once Homo met with a bad omen. His puttees had come undone and he was standing by a hedge winding them on again, when a peasant woman went by and said in a friendly way: "Let thy stockings be—it won't be long till nightfall." That was near Grigia's cottage. When he told Grigia, she made a scornful face and said: "People will talk, and brooks will run", but she swallowed hard, and her thoughts were elsewhere. Then he suddenly remembered a woman he had seen up here, whose bony face was like an Aztec's and who spent all her time sitting at her door, her black hair loose, hanging down below her shoulders, and with three healthy, round-cheeked children around her. Grigia and he unthinkingly passed by her every day, yet this was the only one of the local women whom he did not know, and oddly enough he had never asked about her either, although he was struck by her appearance: it was almost as though the healthiness of her children and the illness manifest in her face were impressions that always cancelled each other out. In his present mood he suddenly felt quite sure it was from here that the disturbing element must have come. He asked who she was, but Grigia crossly shrugged her shoulders and merely exclaimed: "She doesn't know what she says! With her it's a word here and a word over the mountains!" And she made a swift, energetic gesture, tapping her brow, as though she must instantly devalue anything that woman might have said.
    Since Grigia could not be persuaded to come again into any of the hay-barns around the village, Homo proposed going higher up the mountain with her. She was reluctant, and when at last she yielded, she said, in a tone that