“After today,” she said suddenly, “after all this has failed, what then? What will you do?”

“What do you think I should do?”

“Go home.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“What, then?”

Hook thought for a moment, and decided on the truth. “I’ll see Sergeant Rider again. I’ll tell him what you told me. I’ll offer to take a polygraph test, prove it that way if I can. Then maybe he’ll call you and Mrs. Rubin in again. If you won’t agree to a polygraph—who knows? Maybe he’ll think it’s time they held an inquest and got the two of you on the stand, under oath.”

She was exhaling again, slowly, reluctantly giving up the smoke. “I’ll lie,” she said.

“That’s perjury.”

“I know.” She looked at him. “You sure you don’t want to smoke?”

“I’m sure.”

She smiled happily. “The trees are growing taller. The world is slowing down. Just a little. But enough.”

“Perjury’s a serious offense,” he told her. “I wouldn’t want you to go to jail.”

“Why not?”

“Why would I?”

“Well, after all, you did make love to me—without feeling any love. And I’d say that bespeaks a certain indifference, wouldn’t you? A certain coldness.”

She was smiling but her eyes were closed and there was nothing in her face to tell him what she was actually feeling. Apparently he had hurt and angered her.

“Why do you care about that? I thought that’s how it was with you. Or worse—that you only made love with men you despised.”

She sat up, dragged on the cigarette again and dropped the butt over the edge of the boulder into the creek below. Then she looked at him, level, grave.

“I lied,” she said. “On the boat yesterday Jack was right. I wanted you. And before that too—I guess I first felt it on the beach the other day, which was why I struck out at you, why I lied about Chris. I had to hurt you—because I wanted you. I don’t mean sexually. I mean I wanted something from you—your strength maybe, I don’t know. I suppose I just didn’t want to stand alone anymore. I wanted to hide in you, David. And I guess I still do. Which isn’t much, I’ll admit—” Now she smiled, a smile that did not reach her eyes. “But it’s more than I’ve felt for anyone, for a long time. So that’s why it hurts some, David Hook. That’s why it hurts that you made love to me for hours, and felt nothing.”

Hook wondered if she was playing with him, ridiculing him with a subtlety beyond his powers of detection. “I didn’t say I felt nothing,” he offered.

“Then precisely what did you feel?”

“Now who’s patronizing whom?”

“I’m not. I really mean it. What did you feel?”

But Hook could not answer her, not honestly. He felt so many things toward her, desire and hatred and tenderness and more he could not even articulate to himself.

“Pleasure,” he tried. “Gratitude, for—”