“You might go into lecture mode, you mean.”

“Exactly, the dreaded lecture mode. I wouldn’t be able to help myself. I’d bore the hell out of everybody. And this isn’t my show, Julie. Nobody’s there to hear me.”

There was more to it than that, but he wasn’t about to give voice to it. Simply put, this was one of Julie’s rare chances to shine outside the world of the National Park Service. She had put a lot of time and a lot of work into her paper, and he wasn’t about to take even a remote chance of upstaging her.

She gave it some thought. “You know, I’m beginning to see the wisdom of your position,” she said.

“Good, I’m glad that’s settled.”

For a few minutes they walked along amicably enough, hand in hand, and then Julie suddenly stopped and turned to face him.

“Wait a minute, all I have is an M.A. Therefore I can’t be taken seriously?”

“Well, in your case-”

She held up a warning finger. “Consider your reply carefully.”

“In your case,” he continued smoothly, “you’re not pretending to be an authority on biodiversity. You’re here as a wildfire management expert-which you certainly are.”

“Uh-huh, and what about my paper? Is it full of ‘misapprehensions’ and ‘misconceptions’?”

“I think,” he said, unblinking, “that your paper is absolutely brilliant.”

Their eyes remained locked for a second more. “Good answer,” she said as they began walking again.

“Whew,” he said softly.

“From this vantage point,” intoned the sonorous voice from the loudspeakers, “we look back at the whole of Land’s End, the rugged promontory that marks the southeasternmost point of the mainland of England. And we are lulled by our first sense of the gentle Atlantic swell, which has traveled three thousand miles, only to impotently expend its energy against these stark and ancient cliffs.”