Later, when Meg is sleeping and Thomas sitting by her side, Pocahontas takes John to the kitchen, and pours him tea.

They do not speak. The words are too heavy, and the starts of sentences aborted in their mouths.

The door open.

'Rebecca, what is – Smith.' The blond man stands, nods his head politely, only a slight tension in the jaw giving him away.

'John Rolfe.' Then he looks at Pocahontas, and quirks his lips in a smile she has almost forgotten. 'Rebecca?'

'I have been baptized.' She's almost embarrassed, and John gives a little snort of laughter – cut short by Rolfe.

'She has converted to Christianity.'

'What, Christianity? You go to church, Pocahontas?' He's laughing it, he thinks it's comic.

'Yes, John Smith. I have found God.'

'Or He's found you – hunted you down and stripped you, like we have this land.'

'You claim to be an atheist?'

'Religion doesn't interest me too much.'

'Damnation doesn't frighten you?' Smith looks at Pocahontas, who has spoken with a kind of waver to her voice and an odd terror in her eyes.

'Not compared to life.' He says it gently, but it makes her bite her lip.

'I think you ought to think out your priorities' disapproves Rolfe, but the dark eyes and the blue meet. They do not look away. Everything they are twists itself into a single look.

A river. A willow. The wind that paints the world.

Once upon a time she told him that there was a spirit in everything. That everything was alive. Once upon a time the world itself was filled with God.

But now He lives in a house of stone, and the world has lost its pigment.

'Please, John Smith, look away from my wife.'

'Now now Rolfe, here was I thinking we were in one another's debt.' Insufferably arrogant, he winks at Rebecca, so Rolfe goes to sit beside her, holds her hand. After a heartbeat of hesitation she interlocks their fingers, and he breathes again.

Then Thomas has come inside the room.

'Meg's awake. She wants to speak to Mr Smith.'

'Meg?' Rolfe asks, but the fair haired man has gone, and Mr and Mrs Rolfe are left alone, both watching him retreat, back to his daughter.