By the time it happened I knew that I was hopelessly in love with Ruth Stamm. And I knew this woman in the cave with me was hard as stone. But she was there. I took from her the stubborn slacks and the bulky sweat shirt and the satin white bra. Her flesh gleamed dusky in the cave light. We did not speak. It was very complete for us. It was enough that she was woman. But with her first words she turned back into Antoinette Rasi, and destroyed any possible emotional overtones. "Well, aren't we the ones," she said, her voice a bit nasal. She bumped her head on the roof as she was getting her shirt back on, and commented on it with a very basic vocabulary. I turned so that I did not have to look at her. I lay and looked out the entrance, through the gaps between the vines and leaves. I could see the rock wall on the other side of the hollow, thirty feet away. By lowering my head and looking up, I could see a wedge of yellow sky above the rock. As I watched I saw Fitzmartin's head and then his shoulders above the rock wall. Behind me Antoinette started to say something in a complaining voice. I reached back quickly and caught her arm and grasped it warningly. She stopped talking immediately. She moved forward and leaned her warm weight against the back of my left shoulder so that she too could see. It was instinctive to want to pull back into the cave, but I knew he could not see my face or hers behind the dense screen. He stood on the rock against the sky, feet spread, balancing easily. He held a gun in his hand. His big hand masked the gun, but it looked like a Luger. The strange sky made a dull glint on the barrel. When he moved his head he moved it quickly, as an animal does. His mouth was slack, lips parted. His khaki pants were soaked to the knees. He studied the rock wall where the cave was, foot by foot. I flinched involuntarily when his gaze moved across the cave mouth. He turned and moved out of sight. She put her lips close to my ear. "My God, I can see what you mean. Dear Jesus, I'm glad I didn't wait to have a chat with _that_! He's a damn monster. How come he was running around loose?" "He looked all right before. It was on the inside. Now it's showing." "Frankly, he scares the hell out of me. I tell you they ought to shoot him on sight, like a crazy dog." "He's getting worse." "You can't get any worse than that. What was he looking over here for?" "I think he's eliminating places where we could be, one by one. He's got a lot of daylight. I hope he eliminated this place." "You can't see much from over there. Just a sort of shadow. And the hole looks too little, even if it didn't have the stuff in front of it." "I hope you're right." "He gives me the creeps." I kept a careful watch. The next time I saw him, he was climbing down the wall on the far side. Antoinette saw him, too. Her hand tightened on my shoulder. Her breath was warm against my ear. "What's he doing down there?" she whispered.