"Mm ... Second thoughts about the daddy of Dorothy's second——"
"No no. We settled that. She's proud to be carrying it."
"Good genetics could be damn bad psychology."
"No, Jocko. Don't think that. She's close to me as ever."
Sears waited and spoke softly: "New York late on a rainy night, a few car lights moving, street-lamp reflections like golden fish——"
"Orange paintbrush in New Hampshire meadows——We'd better stop."
"We better. I want boat whistles—floating city coming out of the fog. Call it a slow-healing wound.... And look across the channel."
Paul saw it presently: a cliff formation in the coastal range made a brow, nose, and chin. Below this, rounded rock could be a shoulder straining in heroic effort; then, tumbled reality of mountain-fancy must supply whatever held the figure in bondage. "Yes. He looks west. Past us, at the sun."
"Why, no, Paul. I think he looks west of the sun...."
A red-furred girl wandered down from the woods. "I got tired." Arek had lived twenty-two years; she was seven feet tall, not yet adolescent but near it. In the next Red-Moon-before-the-Rains, ten months away, she might take adult part in the frenzy of love if her body demanded it: if not, she would go apart with the other children, whose play also became innocently erotic at that time, and help care for the youngest. Sears grinned as she sat down with them. "Tired or lazy?"