Juliana, a hand supporting her capable chin, steadily regarded his swaying shoulders and the yellow hair beneath his cap.

In her nostrils was the scent of printer's ink and pipe tobacco.

She reflectively rubbed her chin, for it had been stung with a day-old beard that pricked like a nettle.

Now she was recalling another woodland adventure of a dozen years before here in this same forest.
Dave Cowan had been wrong when he said that no one had kissed her since her mother died.

Once on a winter's day, when she was sixteen, she had crossed here, bundled in a red cloak and hood, and a woodchopper, a merry, laughing foreigner who spoke no English, had hailed her gayly, and she had stopped and gayly tried to understand him, and knew only that he was telling her she was beautiful.