Not the first time, that May-Day afternoon in the woods--why, then (at first) Jim had been almost pagan, natural, free, coming on her suddenly in the damp green hollow where spring growth was riotous. Startled and--yes, temporarily set free. He must have been, or he could not have acted with such quick certainty, tenderness and aggression blended for once in a most invincible rightness. In the very first moment, when he pushed aside the hemlock branch and saw her, his face had been comically legible as his mind abruptly discovered a woman in place of Homely-Blake-Girl-Who-Used-to-Live-Next-Door. To the best of her memory, Callista had not smiled; only sat waiting where spring sunlight lay scattered, random gold; waiting and looking up, needing words no more than a grown-up Bonnie would have needed them at the first cruel-kind approach of a yellow-eyed lover across a back fence. Still she had used words, a few, standing up, leaning back against the rough gray body of an oak, something foolish: "Oh--I'm afraid you've started up a dryad." He might not even have heard that, his hands pressing the tree on either side of her face, his growing need as obvious as the sunlight. _I think he never so desired Ann. Such hungers (I know he thought this) are not for good women._ His first kiss had fallen in the thin hollow of her shoulder. He had carried her to a softness of hemlock needles. _I think I helped him a little with my shorts._ Pain of course, the wrench of the torn hymen a required crash of dissonance in the symphonic flow. _I suppose I screamed--had my teeth in his shoulder for a minute--he understood that. Drowsy exhaustion afterward deeper than his_-- _Soles occidere et redire possunt: Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux, Nox est perpetua una dormienda...._ "_What, Cal? What did you say? Was that Italian?_" "_Latin. Thing--happened to remember._" "_Oh._" She had come wide awake then: no Kotex of course, tiresome clinical necessity of a handkerchief for the unimportant bleeding--and had presently given him some sort of English translation that stumbled along on two left feet: "Suns may set and rise, but when our brief light is gone, the night is an eternal sleep." Jim hadn't liked any of that, much. The Latin, or the bleeding. That must have been the first time that the worry-wart crinkle appeared between his thick black eyebrows, the first time the poor guy had said: "Cal, darling, what the devil are we going to do?" _I think I laughed at him, a bit. Not inside me of course._ _SHOULDN'T WE (MY DEAR) GET BACK TO THE PEOPLE VS. BLAKE?_ _Very well, Your Honor, but I don't admit that the episode of adultery (terminology by T. J. Hunter) is irrelevant._ _NOT IRRELEVANT (MY DEAR)--BUT WEREN'T WE DISCUSSING THE DEATH BY VIOLENCE OF ANN PIERCE DOHERTY?_