He found Gerald ahead, sitting on the river bank, watching, worrying. They talked briefly. Gerald said: "Apart from whoever is stalking us, others, if there were any, would begin to falter once they passed the headwaters of the Tombigbee -- and we are approaching that divide."

Tom agreed, and they further agreed to double the watch that night. Gerald moved back to the camp, and Tom decided to sit and take advantage of the late afternoon, and he pulled out his sketchbook. The spring had begun to flower in earnest, and he was itchy to capture some of it on paper, though he mourned the necessity that had made him leave his paints behind in Charlottesville.

As the sun began to decline, he broke off from his drawing to see Adam approaching. Adam sat down beside him, and did not seem immediately to have anything to say, so Tom went back to his work.

After a minute or so, Adam said: "I have watched you drawing, Tom, and it sure got me to wondering if you, well, could show me a thing or two."

"You mean what I have done? Just sketches, Adam, nothing worth showing."

"No", he said shyly, "To draw. I always had a kind of inkling towards it, but it was never any use, so I never got the chance. Used to scribble on the sides of things, nothing much, but always had an interest."

"Well, of course, Adam, nothing easier, here," and he handed over his stubby pencil and the sketch pad.

"What'll I do?"

"Simplicity first, why don't you try and draw that fine tree over there, starting with the trunk." Adam fumbled for a second, and then drew a cartoonish tree.

"Not a bad start," said Tom, "Now draw the tree the way it really looks, not as you think it looks."

"I did that --"

"No, look at it. Forget what you imagine it looks like, what you have seen in pictures, look at that line there, yes there, now draw that."

Adam looked, looked again, and slowly drew a line. Then another.

"Splendid," said Tom, "Now, see, at this point you really were looking, and then you stopped looking here, and then you looked again. Here you cheated. Try again."

Adam tried again. And again. He screwed up his eyes, and drew. After about five minutes he stopped. "I can't go on, it is too exhausting."

"I know, hard work isn't it. Drives you crazy. But that is a good start. Your eyes and your hands must work in concert. But you have the knack. Start looking about. For instance, you see that mist of green over there. Notice how it goes blue, even as the light is going orange, purple in the gathering dusk. The colours are affected by the distance from the eye."

Adam, somewhat humbled, said: "I will."

"Well," said Tom, "hand it back over, I can get another ten minutes sketching in before night falls."

Tom continued to work, making a comment here and there, with Adam watching. Eventually Adam cleared his throat, and said, haltingly: "There is something else we should maybe talk about."

"Yes?"

"Do you have honourable intentions towards Elizabeth?"

"If you mean am I a gentleman, of course."

Adam looked down at his boots. "I think she favours you over me. Makes sense."

"My dear Adam, why would it make sense? You seem to me to be well favoured, intelligent, obviously smitten like a hound."

"You are a foreigner, been many places, an artist, an Army man, you have a way with words, you have everything. "

"Adam, the lady is strong minded, and is more than likely to make a perverse choice just to defy convention."

Adam looked unhappy.

"I meant me, Adam. You lack courage, mon brave. Were she an ordinary woman, I am sure that tricks and fripperies would be worth rummaging around in, but she is not, nor are these ordinary circumstances. She is capable of telling us both to go hang, and choosing neither, or indeed forswearing the company of men forever."

"Becoming a -- nun?"

Tom laughed, "Oh, I doubt it, but perhaps she is of the Sapphic persuasion, but lacks opportunity."

Adam was lost in new terrain. "Sapphic?" he softly inquired.

"A denizen of Lesbos. Perhaps she will find happiness in the arms of another woman. A loss to mankind certainly, but --"

Adam's eyes widened. "But -- but -- that is --"

"My dear Adam, I must invite you to France, really I must."

Adam shuffled uneasily, and began to get to his feet.

"No, no, Adam, don't go. I do have a confession to make."

Adam sat back down.

"The truth is, Adam, apart from whatever designs I have on her, I do confess to having a desperate desire to see Mrs. Miller's naked body."

"Wha --?"

"You see, Adam, now that you are a fellow artist, you can appreciate this. " Tom took out a new sheet of paper. "The fact is that I think she has the most extraordinary torso, those slim hips, even for one who has been a mother, she moves quite finely, so from the back, one often wonders about these points, here" -- and he drew a lower back -- "where the muscles about the sacrospinalis create these classic dimples just above the entrance to the buttocks" -- Adam sat mesmerized at this spectacle, but simultaneously growing beet red -- "Truly, Adam, I have been thinking about her in a Corot style, perhaps a maiden in one of these Tennessee wilderness scenes, the graygreen filtering across the flesh tones, and she would be perfect." He started another drawing, "It requires a frontal pose, of course, something like this. You see, Adam, here, the bowl formed by the hipbones is tilted quite differently in the female, and there is this frisson with the slimmer female, the haunch line telling a quite different story, that is what I admire in her form, the way the drapery hangs low on her hips, even in her rough gown, have you not noticed it?" Adam slowly began to get to his feet, backing away, while Tom continued his drawing, merrily chatting away, "And look here, then there is this ligament here, as one moves down the bowl of the belly towards -- very hard to draw, what you really need here is the lightest, softest featherlike touch of the pencil as you limn these complex shadows and hollows down --" Adam turned and ran like a large moose through the woods, and did not stop until he nearly ran over the campfire.

At his fleeing Tom lay back and laughed and laughed, the first great laugh he had had in months. He was unable to stop for several minutes.

The sound of Adam's crashing through the woods, and the sound of laughter were picked up by the hunters, who had been nearby for hours, but had not known how near they were.