and lord it over ordinary
mortals. I'll have furs and you'll have yachts and we'll ..."

"I'm a lousy sailor," said Coulter. "No, I don't want a yacht."

"Nonsense, we'll have a yacht and cruise wherever we want to go. Think
of how easy it will be for us to make money." Her eyes were shining more
brightly still. "No more standing in a teller's cage for me. No more
feeling the life-sap dry up inside me, handling thousands of dollars a
day and none of it mine."

She stepped to him, gripped him tightly, her fingernails making
themselves felt even through the heavy material of his jacket. She
kissed him fiercely and said in a throaty whisper, "Darling, I'm going
upstairs. Come up in ten minutes--and be young again with me."

She left him standing alone in front of the fire....

Coulter filled his pipe and lit it. His mother had said _we_ when she
talked of her plans, as if her son were merely an object to be moved
about at her whim. _Pick up my lighter at MacAuliffe's ... going to take
a trip abroad this summer ... not going to be foolish about her...._ He
could see the phrases as vividly as if they were written on a video
teleprompter.

And then he saw another set of phrases--different in content, yet
strangely alike in meaning. _Nonsense, we'll have a yacht ... lord it
over ordinary mortals ... a long wait._ He thought of the voodoo and the
fingernail parings, of the savage materialism of the woman who was even
now preparing herself to receive him upstairs, who was planning to
relive his life with him in _her_ image.

He thought of his wife, foolish perhaps, but true to him and never
domineering. He thought of the Scarborough house and the good friends he
had there, hundreds of miles and twenty years away. He wondered if he
could go back if he got beyond the five-mile radius of the strange
machine in the basement.

He looked down with regret at his slim young body, so unexpectedly
regained--and thought of the heavier, older less vibrant body that lay
waiting for him five miles away. Then swiftly, silently, he tiptoed into
the hall, donned coat and hat and gloves, slipped through the front door
and bolted for the Pontiac.

He drove like a madman over the icy roads through the dark. Somehow he
sensed he would have to get beyond the reach of the machine before Eve
grew impatient and came downstairs and found him gone. She might, in her
anger, send him back to some other Time--or perhaps the machine worked
both wa