Alonzo watched for a quarter of an hour as the two continued so: the man rigid of body but with alertly moving eyes and drawing hand, the woman still except for the steady rising and falling of her breast as she breathed and lived.

Presently, the man relaxed and glanced at his drawing briefly before stopping work altogether and putting down the sketch pad and crayon on a stump as casually as he would have set them on a table indoors. When he approached the woman, she remained still in her reverie until he was quite near her. She looked at him for a moment startled, then with eyes that understood, accepted, asked.

There was no protesting, no pretending surprise, no turning away. He took her hand, held it in his briefly, then placed its open palm on his cheek. She bent forward to meet his lips with hers. They held each other and kissed harder.

Alonzo stared at them astounded. This, the woman who had sat her horse and looked at him coolly—spoke to him with deliberate courtesy—dropped her glove as she rode away, unheeding his call? This woman was pressing herself against the man as if she were the man and he the woman to be taken.

Alonzo held his breath in a kind of amazement. He must go—he must stay. He had to stay and see. He watched as they kissed and held and drew apart; then as they removed or opened their clothes to effect direct contact. He saw glowing flesh put to flesh and heard their cries. Only then, seeing and hearing and hating the joy of their conjunction, did he go. When he was at a distance where he could no longer hear them, on what he called his own land, he began to cry. It was as if the woman had betrayed him. He despised her for her falseness even as he exulted in it. She was no better than Geraldine! For all her fine airs, she was not beautiful nor good; she had given herself as loosely as a sow in season.

But what had all that to do with him?

Everything!

Day after day Alonzo returned to the glade, but the lovers never came there again. He put his hand on the warm, sunny rock where she had leaned. He stood where the man had stood drawing the woman and tried to imagine he saw her there before him. He knelt on the leaves where they had lain locked in their loving, as if he hoped to find some proof or denial there of his own witnessing.

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