“In fact, it’s only a matter of terms,” Robert Grimshaw said, looking away down the long slopes of the downs inland.
“Everything is always a matter of terms,” Katya said.
The white donkey was placidly browsing the short grass and the daisy heads.
“Oh, come up,” Ellida said, and eventually the white beast responded to her exertions. It wasn’t, however, until the donkey was well out of earshot that Grimshaw broke the silence that Katya seemed determined to maintain. He pointed with his stick to where—a dark patch of trees dominated by a squarish, dark tower, in the very bottom of a fold in the downs—a hamlet occupied the extreme distance.
“I want to walk to there,” he said.
“I’m not at all certain that I want to walk at all,” she answered, and he retorted:
“Oh yes, you do. Look how the weathercock shines in the sun. You know how, when we were children, we always wanted to walk to where the weathercock shone, and there was always something to prevent it. Now we’re grown up, we’re going to do it.”
“Ah, it’s different now,” she answered. “When we were children we expected to find something under the shining weathercocks. Now there’s nothing in the world that we can want to find. It seems as if we’d got all that we’re ever going to get.”
“Still, you don’t know what we mightn’t find under there,” he said.
She looked straight into his clear olive-coloured face. She noted that his eyes were dark and tired.