“You haven’t been lying here all day sleeping waiting for me.” It was not a question.

“Daphne,” he said.

“That’s better,” she said. “Just the sight of me should not make you scream.”

“I was startled was all.”

“That’s all right. I don’t mind that.”

“Oh shoot. Boy I was asleep.” He wanted to kiss her. He said, “That’s what I hear.”

“What do you hear?”

“That you don’t mind startling people.”

“That’s true enough. Up to a point. But you’re aiming at some detail. You want to fill me in?”

“I spent the day with Alex Mebane. He took me for a little trip. And talked the whole time through it.”

“I see,” she said. “So, you’re learning what you came after. That’s good, isn’t it? But you’re not being straight with me, Foster. Foster? I thought maybe we understood each other.”

“Maybe we do,” he said. “But I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

She spouted her lips and blew air at him. “What else is there? But you hold on and back up. I want to know what you heard. About me.”

“Isn’t that the way it is? We always need to know about ourselves first.”

“Well shoot boy. What’s the alternative?” And she grinned at him.

“I don’t know.”

And she heard the despair in his voice and she was quiet a long moment. She did not move away or toward him but she looked at him close. Then she said, “I don’t guess there is one.”

He said, “I heard about you over at the college. Riding that mule.”

She sighed. “I always felt bad about that mule. He didn’t want to go. I had to get off him and break a branch off a bush to whip him on with. I never thought it was because he knew it was wrong. I just figured he knew it was the wrong time of day to have to work at all. It was so early in the morning. A mule knows what time is his and what time is not.” And she grinned at him.

“Seems to me, you wearing only some kind of toga made out of a sheet, even a mule would be happy to rouse himself to carry you.”

“Is that what he told you? Well, I had a slip on. My underwear. I was not jaybird naked.”

He reached for her face. She stood up. “Are these your dogs?”

“This here is Glow and that one is Lovey. They’re English setters.”

“I know what they are. They’re pretty.”

“They are pretty.” He sat without moving, watching her. She stood beside the bed not looking down at him but off. She was very still but he felt that she was in some motion within herself. Some perturbation, some conflict rising up. It’s me, he thought and reached for her hand. Even as he reached thinking it was the wrong thing to do.