When she came with her flowers, panting to the hut, he had already started a fire, and the twigs were crackling. Her sharp breasts rose and fell, her hair was plastered down with rain, her face was flushed ruddy and her body glistened and trickled. Wide-eyed and breathless, with a small wet head and full, trickling, naive haunches, she looked another creature.

He took the old sheet and rubbed her down, she standing like a child. Then he rubbed himself, having shut the door of the hut. The fire was blazing up. She ducked her head in the other end of the sheet, and rubbed her wet hair.

“We’re drying ourselves together on the same towel, we shall quarrel!” he said.

She looked up for a moment, her hair all odds and ends.

“No!” she said, her eyes wide. “It’s not a towel, it’s a sheet.”

And she went on busily rubbing her head, while he busily rubbed his.