He groped after her mood.
'You could have poetry and cake.'
She threw up her head laughing and he saw where the sunburn stopped on her neck.
'Wedding cake?' she asked mischievously.
'If I'm not an angel, I'm not an absolute rotter,' he said quickly.
'It wouldn't have mattered in any case,' she murmured, 'if...'
'If what?'
She did not answer. In the distance the drum pounded on, inciting to the dance some isolated community of black men, sentient only of the whips of hunger and desire. She wondered if white civilisation at heart obeyed any different goad.
'That's all the music you'll hear,' Dick nodded his head in the direction of the sound.
'Life can be lived without stimulants,' she said.