briefly. Joe slid part of the way down the hill and picked up the lower path back to the parking area and his car. He was thoroughly frozen. He turned on the car heater full blast, and then poured a cup of coffee from his thermos to warm his throat and thaw his body. He had learned over the years of driving up from Minneapolis and his agent and the openings and cocktail parties to carry hot coffee in a quart thermos. The house was another hour ahead. Perhaps she would be there, waiting for him, glowing with success at the easel. Perhaps her eyes would be shining again, the way they used to, the way they had when he first met her ten years ago. From the first moment he saw her in his painting class at the college, dressed in jeans and a long white linen shirt he had adored her. She wasn't the first white student who had attracted him nor the first with whom he had an affair. But Becky was the first white woman he had loved. He found himself lecturing directly to her, quite unable to take his eyes from hers in the classroom. She had been a delight to the eye. Her figure was perfectly proportioned. Her mouth was exactly the right width, her eyes widely-spaced, her cheek bones almost as high as his own. But he wasn't attracted to her because of that physical perfection or because her skin was the color of the palest pink rose, her hair so long and so soft he wanted to own it. Her long thighs and perfectly rounded breasts were cheap commodities in his life as an artist. What had caught his breath was how her whole body moved in rhythm with earth rhythms. Her consciousness was so elevated that she spoke to him without speaking. Their love was perfectly fulfilled, physically and emotionally despite an age difference. He was thirty-five and she a bare nineteen. The difference only enhanced his sense of needing to protect her and her feeling of security in him. His passion for her had once ignited joy and delight. Now it filled him with thoughts of death. They lived in Minneapolis for a time but once she saw the north shore of Lake Superior she was never happy in the city again. Perhaps that had been his first mistake. He should not have shown her the reservation. As they drove north from Duluth along the shore on that first trip home, Becky was intoxicated by the