“There” she said, as she put the last fuse into place.

“And now?”

“Now we wait ‘til morning.” She walked out from under the bridge, and brushed the mud off her legs in the moonlight. There were a couple of leeches, slimy and dark on her calves, and she pulled those off, coolly. He admired her composure.

“Here,” he said, and pulled a last one off, which had inched up her leg and fastened itself to the hot place behind her knee. He ran his hand down her calf.

“Is that all of them?” She wiped her hands on her trouser legs and rolled them down. She leaned on the covert, hands in her pockets and slouched like a youth.

She might have been with an entirely different person, for not only did she look radically different, but she acted that way as well. It was as if men’s clothing gave her a freedom that women’s weeds didn’t. She was as exuberant as a young boy. Not only had the contours of her body changed, but those of her face. With her hair pulled back in a severe braid under her collar, her cheekbones were accentuated, and her jaw was square. Her eyes had a metallic glint. She looked like Val’s twin brother.

“What shall we do to pass the time?” she said playfully. “What do men do in regiments?”

“Smoke…”

“That’s out of the question.” She indicated the explosive network above them, the small powder kegs strapped to the boards of the underside of the bridge.

“…Drink…”

“Maybe later.”

“Well, that leaves bragging about the women we’ve had.”

She laughed.

“You first. And what women have you had… what should I call you?”

“George.”

“What women have you had, George?”

“I’m a gentleman, I’d rather not say.” Her voice was merry and musical. “ What about you? Whom would you brag about?”

He looked at her and didn’t answer. There was a pause and they looked down.

“You look like one of those Shakespearean heroines,” he said softly.

“I do?” she said, pleased. “I thought of becoming an actress, once.”

“Your family did not approve?”

“Well, not exactly. It’s not what respectable Southern ladies do.” She stopped and thought about it.  “I think my father would have allowed me to pursue it. I would have, too…” here she stooped and picked up a flat stone “…but for the lack of good ladies’ roles. Most plays that are written today have women as wives and mothers of the hero.” She skimmed the stone across the water; they could see the flashes of light where it skipped three times.

“You’d like to be the hero.”

She crossed to the bank and sat next to him. “Shakespeare is the exception. I do love him. Do I look like Viola in Twelfth Night?” He nodded. She turned her face up to the quarter moon and spoke in a low voice, and he could see her as if in a dark blue spotlight.

“My father had a daughter loved a man

As it might be perhaps, were I a woman

I should your lordship . . .

. . . .She never told her love

But let concealment, like a worm in th’ bud

Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,

And, with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat like Patience on a monument

Smiling at grief. Was this not love indeed?

We men may say more, swear more; but indeed

Our shows are more than will. . .”

He had inched towards her and now sat close to her in the darkness, close enough for her to feel his heat.

“. . .  For still we prove

Much in our vows but little in our love.”

“Let me prove it,” he said, low and husky. She turned her face to his, out of the light of the moon, into shadow.

“Don’t. Let us have this night as comrades, as equals. Let us see this through.”

They sat with their faces close together, on the precipice of desire, the magnetism of it pulling them together.

“Well, then, George, how about that drink?”

“Good by me!” She straightened up, squared her shoulders and shook herself, as if shaking off the spell.

He passed her the jigger, and watched her drink, while he downed his directly from his silver flask. Soon she lay down on the bank, and went directly to sleep. The opiate he had slipped her would make her slumber for hours.

He listened to the sounds of the night creatures. The crickets, the banjo-like bellow of the frogs, the hoots of the owls on the hunt, from tree to tree. A damp chill had descended into the hollow. After several minutes, he curled against her to keep warm, and she did not stir. Her breath was low and steady. She smelled of horse sweat and damp wool and underneath the faintest trace of her womanliness. He savored that, and basked in the feel of her warmth.

Toward dawn she stirred a little, and made a sweet noise against him. He disengaged from her gently. She was smiling in her sleep, her masculine face the most beautiful and serene he had ever seen it. He said, “Goodbye, Glorie,” and kissed her on the lips as she dreamed.