Bowie wanted to start; but finally the little light-haired man had his way; and they melted away across the knolls to the west just after sunset.

I returned with all the air of having driven them off, and ate my third meal cooked by Virginia Royall.
2 I do not know how long we camped in this lonely little forest; for I lost reckoning as to time.

Once in a while Virginia would ask me when I thought it would be safe to go on our way; and I always told her that it would be better to wait.
I had forgotten my farm.

When I was with her, I could not overcome my bashfulness, my lack of experience, my ignorance of every manner of approach except that of the canallers to the waterside women, with which I suddenly found myself as familiar through memory as with the route from my plate to my mouth; that way I had fully made up my mind to adopt; but something held me back.
I now began leaving the camp and from some lurking-place in the distance watching her as a cat watches a bird.

I lived over in my mind a thousand times the attack I would make upon her defense, and her yielding after a show of resistance.