crosses the two hundred yards of dark garden to him it is her choice, and she might find him asleep, not from a lack of love but from necessity, to be clear-minded towards the next day’s treacherous objects. He thinks her remarkable. He wakes and sees her in the spray of the lamp. He loves most her face’s smart look. Or in the evenings he loves her voice as she argues Caravaggio out of a foolishness. And the way she crawls in against his body like a saint. 

 

They talk, the slight singsong of his voice within the canvas smell of their tent, which has been his all through the Italian campaign, which he reaches up to touch with his slight fingers as if it too belonged to his body, a khaki wing he folds over himself during the night. It is his world. She feels displaced out of Canada during these nights. He asks her why she cannot sleep.