ve_ now, not like back home. And I nearly forgot about
you, Victor dear, although I can't understand that now, and all I wanted
was to live here like a normal person, a normal wife. But _he_ couldn't
understand that. At any rate, I went native, I went whole hog native.

"And then it was time to go home. But I wasn't going. So I made up this
story about forgetting everything and I pretended I thought he was nuts
or something and he went and got you and suddenly there you were in my
living room and it all came back, darling, it came back so fast and
strong I thought I'd die on the spot. And I love you now, darling, I
love you now and forever, and I won't go back alive, I swear that."

* * * * *

"Mimi," Donald begged, "think of the future. If you don't go back it'll
be all upset. We can't have people just popping up in the past from the
future, there has to be discipline. It's one thing to come here quietly
for a few months of harmless vacation, and then just as quietly to
disappear. But to settle down brazenly in another time, to ... to
immigrate, as it were, well, it just can't be done. There's no
precedent, just none at all. _No_body would think of doing such a thing.
Why, who knows what would happen if you stayed here? It could upset the
whole pattern of the future!"

"The future will just have to take care of itself," Mimi answered. "I
love him, and you can't argue with that. There's nothing you can say
that can argue with that. I don't care poof for the future."

* * * * *

Victor sat down quietly on the edge of the bed, he felt a bit weak
around the general vicinity of the knees. Mimi stood up and strode over
to the window, her back to the conversation. "Mimi," Donald pleaded,
"just think of what you're doing. You'll lose your immortality, for one
thing. You know, it's not something you're just _born_ with, it's the
result of careful medical science. Why, almost _any_thing could happen
to you here. They have all _sorts_ of ugly diseases. And if you should
last just a few years longer, just maybe fifty or sixty more years, your
heart will almost certainly pop off. They don't have any sort of
arterial rejuvenation now, nothing at all. You're trading immortality
for a mere _moment_."

"I don't give a damn or a wild pig's snort," she replied.

"Don't be vulgar," Donald said. "Let's keep this on a civilized plane."

"That's not vulgarity," she answer