“We have both spoken words,” said Bolin mildly. The shy blindness on her face glided to and fro, like a prisoner. As she strolled with Bolin she still seemed a puppet dragged along the dust of a road by some Christ. Bolin’s middle-aged face whistled, with limpid chagrin, to his youth. His high cheek-bones were like hidden fists straining against his sallow skin. They came upon a dead rabbit stiffening by the roadside. “Bury him,” said Bolin, gravely. The woman clutched at her habitual self. “S-a-a-y, what’s the idea?” she asked in a shrilly lengthened voice. “Bury him,” repeated Bolin gravely. With a dazed giggle she picked a dead branch from the ground and jabbed at the loose black loam. Then she gingerly prodded the dead rabbit with the branch, shoving it into the depression she had made. She scooped earth over it with her foot. “Now we’re both crazy,” she said uncertainly, and her nervous smile was the juggled wreck of a silver helmet. “You have buried your meekness,” said Bolin, calmly amused. “Now walk beside me and do not speak unless, being brave, you desire to leave me.” The woman stood gaping at him, like a vision poignantly doubting the magician who has created it. Sullenness made her lips straight for a moment, then faded into twitching awe. She slid her arm into his and once more seemed a doll dragged along the dust of a road by some distracted giant. Bolin retraced his steps; he and the woman passed by the garden of cold peonies and came to a bend in the road. Late afternoon blundered sedately through shades of green foliage beneath them. Below the hilltop on which they stood, a barn-like house crouched, its tan cerements repelling the afternoon light. The woman tapped her chin with two fingers in a drum-beat of reality. “Gotta get back to work, old dear,” she said, amiably squinting at Bolin. Bolin’s sallow face shook once and became chiseled apathy. “So do I,” he answered, his voice like the accidental ring of light metals. “I’m the new waiter Foley hired last week. You’ve been too busy to notice me much.” For a full minute the woman stood staring at him, her hands upon her hips, her slightly bulging gray eyes like water-drops threatening to roll down her shattered face. “You’re the guy they call Nutty Louie,” she said at last, as though confiding a ludicrously startling message to herself. Then for another full minute she stood staring at him. “We’re bughouse,” she said in a mesmerised whisper. “Bughouse.” Bolin walked forward without a word. The woman gaped at him for a moment and then ran after him as she had in the garden of peonies. RELIGION