Several figures in the unmistakable posture of swimmers.( Bermann had been right about the presence of an ancient lake.) He walked farther into the coldness, into the Cave of Swimmers, where he had left her. She was still there. She had dragged herself into a corner, had wrapped herself tight in the parachute material. He had promised to return for her. He himself would have been happier to die in a cave, with its privacy, the swimmers caught in the rock around them.( Hermann had told him that in Asian gardens you could look at rock and imagine water, you could gaze at a still pool and believe it had the hardness of rock.) But she was a woman who had grown up within gardens, among moistness, (with words like trellis and hedgehog.) Her passion for the desert was temporary.