She amused and intrigued me – this small unreachable alien creature locked in her amoral pre-literate condition with no knowledge of past or future, free of everything, in a state of grace. I wanted to know how it felt. I would question her, craftily, with adult sophistry, with the backing of Freud and Jung and centuries of perception and opinion. And she would slip away from me, impervious, equipped with her own powers of evasion, with Indian lore, with techniques of camouflage.
