and
there's been already too much of lie in my life. I just cannot stand for
any more of that. _It can not be, Semper._ I've told you plainly and it
means not _ever_, not _ever_. Go now. Do as I told you. Go immediately.
If you really love me, grant me this, let me feel that I could do at
least something--this one thing for you."

"Oona!" Lee exclaimed and it sounded like a deep-throated bell in an
ancient cathedral town as it rings the last stroke of midnight and then
hangs mute in the dark sky. That happiness he had felt, that cometflight
through all the stars in heaven; it was too big for him, it couldn't
last. He had sensed the blow before it fell. It wasn't like being hit in
action; it was like in that field hospital when the doc had told him:
"This is going to hurt, Joe--I'm sorry, but we're shy of morphine."
Howard's name had cut just like that expected knife. What was there left
to say? Nothing; nothing, but one small matter.

"I love you, Oona, and that means forever just as much as you mean that
not ever you can come with me. And I thank you, Oona, for this hour.
Yes; I think I'll go back to Australia--where I belong. But not tonight.
I've set a great experiment going--the outcome is no longer in my hand.
Still I feel I mustn't run away now. In fact I cannot; it's somewhat
like a soldier's duty to stay up front. I'm going to see this to the
end."

She buried her face in her hands: "I knew it. You child, you--you Don
Quixote charging against the windmills. They're going to _kill_ you,
they're going to _kill_ you. And now there's nothing I can do."

For a second her small fists pounded against Lee's breast and the next
moment, before he could do anything, she had jumped out of the plane
slamming the door in his face. For a few seconds more he heard her
footsteps rushing across the frozen turf and the receding wails of
echoes from the hangar walls:

"And now there's nothing I can do--nothing I can do."

When after a minute of fumbling in the dark he pushed the door open, it
was too late.

* * * * *

He walked over to the hotel; not by an act of will, but with his legs
somehow doing the job alone and by themselves. He ordered himself a car
from the Braintrust garage. He entered The Brain and went up in the
elevator to Apperception 36. Nobody seemed to notice that there was a
somnambulist passing by.... He unlocked the door and under the rows of
neon lights things were as he