‘It is?’
‘So when the moisture content of these reservoirs is suddenly lowered, I—we—uh—… well, breathing becomes easier and the moon has no significance.’
‘It hasn’t?’
‘And that’s what you’ve been doing to me.’
‘I have?’
She pulled away from him, gave him her eyes and a swift, rich arpeggio of laughter. ‘You can’t say it was an immoral thing to do,’ she said.
He gave her laughter back to her; ‘No nice girl would do a thing like that.’
She wrinkled her nose at him and slipped into her room. He looked at her closed door and probably through it, and then turned away.
Smiling and shaking his head in delight and wonderment, encasing a small cold ball of terror inside him with a new kind of calm he had found; puzzled, enchanted, terrified, and thoughtful, he turned the shower on and began to undress.
They stood in the road until after the taxi had gone and then Janie led the way into the woods. If they had ever been cut, one could not know it now. The path was faint and wandering but easy to follow, for the growth overhead was so thick that there was little underbrush.