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Rachel?”
    “My sister. You seen her.”
    “I saw dozens of identical girls. How should I know which one was Rachel?”
    “She looked growed. Some of ’em don’t.” Sarah tossed a pellet into the fire. “She’s set her heart on coming.”
    “You told her no.”
    “I told her I’d see.”
    “You told her I’m going?”
    “I told her you was thinking on it.”
    “I have told you and told you and told you. How can I be more definite?” I was being a little rough with the map, I noticed, so I took it back to the table. I stood there by the table trying to collect myself, looking at Sarah’s back. She was bending to her hem again.
    “What are you thinking?” I asked.
    Still bent, she mumbled something. To hear, I moved over and stood behind her. She said, “Rachel’s just like me. She never had things fine. She wouldn’t fret.”
    “Would you leave me in this life I can’t stand because I’ve had things fine?”
    “This might be just play for you. You even said you might not stay.”
    “Did Rachel say she’d stay? Did she say, ‘I’ll stay, though I hate it and die of it!’? All right, I’ll say that. I’ll stay. Whatever happens.”
    “There’s something else.”
    I groaned.
    “There’s what I feel,” she said. “You might not like it.”
    “What do you feel?”
    “I care for you.”
    “I want you to. I care for you.”
    “If it bothers you or anything I can stop. So tell me if you don’t want me to.”
    “I don’t want you to stop.”
    She straightened up and turned her head and looked up at me.
    “Is it really all right?” she asked.
    “Of course it’s all right.”
    She leaned back against me then. “I think about you,” she said. “Every day in the clearing I expect to see you again because I did once. That one time.”
    “I think about you too,” I said. I put my hands on her shoulders. She bent her left cheek down until it touched my hand.
    “I keep thinking every shadow is you. Because when you came that day, there was this shadow in the corner of my eye that when I looked was you.”
    “I’ll come often. And then we’ll go together.”
    “I know it sounds like just talk, so soon, when I don’t even know you yet.” She pressed her lips against my hand. “I’d’ve waited, but I had to know what to tell Rachel.” She kissed each knuckle and reached the edge of my hand and kissed it. I felt her waiting there for me to turn my palm up. I could feel her wish, and wondered why she couldn’t feel mine, that she butt it up like a calf going for milk.
    She shouldn’t have been afraid. She should have felt my wish. To punish her, I said, “I’m wasting daylight, standing here.”
    She flung herself up. “Oh, don’t waste day light! Where’s my jerkin?” She rushed around blindly, looking for her jerkin. It was somewhere there. I myself couldn’t see or remember.
    “You didn’t mean what I meant. It wasn’t all right at all. Now what’ll I do? Oh God, where’s my jerkin?” She found it and thrust her arms into the sleeves. “Well, Miss White,” she said, “you get on with your daylight and I’ll get on – ”
    I stayed as she’d left me, looking down at the bench. I felt her gaze. She was trying by the strength of her wish to make me turn. I made her say it: “Won’t you look at me?”
    “Oh, wasn’t I?” (My politest voice.) “I’m sorry. Are you leaving? Must you?”
    “Oh, I can’t go away without kissing you!”
    And I felt her lips on my cheek, nibbling towards my mouth, and getting there, and staying; and I knew why she’d been afraid and wondered why I hadn’t been, why I had lured this mighty mystery and astonishment into the room, into our lives.
    I turned my head to save my life.
    “Did I hold you too hard? Did I hurt you?”
    “Oh no!” I said. I pressed her even closer, to show.
    “Was that a feeling I felt in you?”
    I hesitated and then told true: “Yes.”
    She turned her face up, with the look of Jacob granted the