“Katie, you’ll leave here and go back to the city, and things will happen to you, you’ll go to school and meet new people, maybe you’ll get married next year, or be out on a dig, and each thing that happens will add new parts to you. Maybe at some point they’ll all come together, and you’ll think, ‘Well, so that’s what it’s all about.’ I have no doubt but what it will be different from what I’ve found; that doesn’t bother me. It’s good for me, probably all wrong for you. All I’m saying is that you seem to want me to tell you what to think, even if it’s just so you can tell me I’m wrong and irresponsible. I’m not willing to do that. I can be wrong to you and right to me, and there’s no point in trying to bring it together. It’s impossible. It might just as well be skipped, because it doesn’t take us anywhere.”

Her face is angry, taut, pleading. “Then that pretty well makes it a waste of time trying to talk to you, doesn’t it? I mean, you don’t want to talk about anything important, you don’t want to share anything, so why don’t I just leave? I guess that’s what I might as well do, isn’t it?”

She is begging me to tell her to stay; what strikes me is that when she says the words, suggests she could leave, my stomach seems to lurch and I want to reach out and hold her from going. I haven’t seen until now how much I depend on her.

For youth? For old ideas brought again to my attention? For simple human connection? Am I lonely? All this will have to be understood. I am falling back into a trap she has set without intending to; or maybe that is wrong, and it is what she has intended all along; but first I have to stop her.

“No Katie, that’s not the point,” I say swiftly. “Surely we can be together and learn without having answers. I gain something from you, maybe you gain something from me?”

“Perhaps,” she says. There is a triumph about her. “I suppose you re right. Anyway, I think I’ll go back to the hotel now. I’d like to rest. I’ll be back tomorrow.”