"Breeze Anstey."
Two woman pursue an idyllic herb-farming life in the country, forming a bond that for Breeze, the younger woman, is romantically and sexually imbued. With the arrival of her friend's lover, Breeze realizes that "things [that] had seemed, a moment before, to be all over, but...seemed, now, to be just beginning. And she knew that the rest, whatever it was, lay with herself."
The story bears comparison to D.H. Lawrence's "The Fox." That "novelette" (as Lawrence called it) was published in 1922, and it can be assumed that Bates had read it. The stories differ in that, in Lawrence's tale the tense manipulation of people and events by the man is the main focus, whereas in Bates's story, the man and his partner are mainly tools to help reveal Breeze's realization and development. An adaptation in the television series "Country Matters" was aired in September 1972. The story was dramatized for BBC Radio (broadcast in 1986) by Gregory Evans in a production starring Jenny Funnell, Henry Stamper and Elizabeth Rider and directed by Gordon House. In Something Short and Sweet (1937), Country Tales (1938), Country Tales (1940), Twenty Tales (1951), Selected Stories (1957), Seven by Five/The Best of H.E. Bates (1963). Reprinted in The Literature of Lesbianism (2003).