“I thought I’d managed to distract you,” he said.

She glanced down at the book.

“With him?” she asked scornfully. “All that innate goodness of man? Back to nature?”

“That’s a dumb simplification,” Max said. “What you’re talking about was a point of argument he used in an essay. Try to get things right! He never held society could return to a state of natural innocence. Didn’t you even like the little story of the walnut tree?”

“I’ve never been faintly interested in Rousseau,” she said, clearly reproving him. “There’s too much for me to read that’s important.”

Max had a sudden picture of himself with his hands around Fern’s neck, just a little squeeze or two. But that was part of his own bourgeois problem, that profound sense of violation he so often suffered at his comrades’ boisterous or outraged dismissals of so many of the writers he secretly admired, had nourished himself with through the days of his adolescence. But his comrades were right, of course. There were more important things to think about now, to act on now. Later would be time enough.

“It’s a girl!” he exclaimed. “What’s she doing there? We’re hours from a town.”

“She was probably taking a walk and has sat down to rest,” Fern said, accelerating slightly.

“Slow down,” Max demanded. “Come on, Fern. Stop the car.” He took hold of her arm, sensing her impulse to drive on, not to get involved. Fern made a face, but she drew up at the side of the road and stopped a few yards from the immobile girl who did seem to be sleeping, her head back against the tree trunk, her eyes closed.

For a moment or two, Fern and Max were silent in the sudden stillness of the warm car. Fern did not look at the girl; her eyes were on the road ahead. Her thoughts, Max knew, reached out to the comrades as they threaded their way among the yellow-slatted camp chairs set up for the convention, thin but tenacious thoughts.

He had been reading paragraphs at random from the first book of Rousseau’s Confessions. It was not the first time he had ridden with Fern, and he knew how her driving affected him; he had read to take his mind off the possibility of a fatal collision. Once, on some trip, he’d asked to take the wheel. She’d exploded into rage, and the tact with which he’d made his request was laid waste by her accusation that it was his nervousness which made her drive so badly.

“Next time, I’ll fix you,” he said. “You’ll get the rural electrification program in the Ukraine…or the woman question.”

“Your levity is frowned upon in certain quarters,” she said stiffly.

“Oh, Fern!”