"And to hell with that, too," George said.
"What?" George heard Gistla say. He turned quickly. She was standing at the edge of the clearing, her round green eyes looking soft and serious. She wore the usual gray cape that reached her ankles. Her voice was a deep round sound, and there was hardly any accent in the words she had learned so quickly since the Colony had begun.
"Talking to myself," George grinned. The old excitement was inside of him. There was a kind of exotic quality in meeting
Gistla that never disappeared.
She crossed the clearing, not too gracefully, and touched her fingers against his hand. This had been the extent of their physical expression of love.
"It is nice to see you, George."
He noticed his feeling of pleasure when he heard her speak his name. There was something about his own name being spoken by Gistla that had always seemed even more strange than anything else.
She sat down beside him, and they looked at each other while the leaves whispered around them and the birds fluttered and chirped. He discovered again the feeling of rightness, sitting beside Gistla. There was a solidity about her, a quiet maturity that he seemed able to feel in himself only when he was with her. And that too was strange, because in American terms of age, she was much younger than he.
Nice