I thought after she left that perhaps I had expected too much. What had I known about honesty, back when I lived where she does? What did I still know about honesty, alone, telling truth only to myself? I would know for certain if I went back to that world and saw if it were very different, or if I was. Would I lose what I learned here? Was this strong enough to hold me? Was I really changed, or just protected?

That is why I have been considering her proposal that I go back with her. Back into the city and the people, where I would see if it is true. A test, surely? Another self-examination? Have I already passed, or would I fail again? With Katie comes another world, I look at myself with the eyes of that world, she brings it back to me and I have to think about it.

There is no hurry to decide. Katie has three weeks left of her vacation before she goes back to begin university. (You notice how I am aware, now, of three weeks. As a time span, I recognize it; I can’t really say how long it is, it seems as if it must be a long time, but perhaps it’s actually quite short. Katie said this morning, “I have to go back in three weeks,” and it meant something to me. Perhaps I’m already slipping back; perhaps it’s all just been a joke, by me, on me.)

Katie also says she has been here now for five weeks; that means, I calculate, that our time together is more than half over, which is extraordinary. Five weeks, what is that? It seems like a moment ago that I first saw her, shy and frightened, approaching the cabin as I watched, hidden, in the garden. It is pointless, of course, to wonder if I should have stayed hidden.

And, too, it seems as if Katie has existed here forever, in one of her forms, for we have gone through so much in the time. Her rage, her resentment, her pity and her self-pity, her love, all have been in this time. And also in this time I have felt the sucking, felt myself being drawn back, away from what I am. I have become sometimes unsettled, scattered, thinking about Katie and myself, and I have felt more and more that it is getting out of my control, that I am being drawn into — what? I am not as content as I was.

She is learning. She is learning, more and more, to let me be.