e felt her hair, wet
her fingers and ran them along her hairline and back over her ears.
After wiping her hands on her apron, she took it off. She straightened
her dress, lifted her head with a little flourish, and stepped smartly
toward the window.

Then her face went miserable again and her steps slowed.

No, it couldn't be, and it won't be, she told herself. It had been just
an illusion, a silly romantic dream that she had somehow projected out
of her beauty-starved mind and given a moment's false reality. There
couldn't be anything alive outside. There hadn't been for two whole
years.

And if there conceivably were, it would be something altogether
horrible. She remembered some of the pariahs--hairless, witless
creatures, with radiation welts crawling over their bodies like worms,
who had come begging for succor during the last months of the
Terror--and been shot down. How they must have hated the people in
refuges!

But even as she was thinking these things, her fingers were caressing
the bolts, gingerly drawing them, and she was opening the shutters
gently, apprehensively.

No, there couldn't be anything outside, she assured herself wryly,
peering out into the green night. Even her fears had been groundless.

But the face came floating up toward the window. She started back in
terror, then checked herself.

For the face wasn't horrible at all, only very thin, with full lips and
large eyes and a thin proud nose like the jutting beak of a bird. And no
radiation welts or scars marred the skin, olive in the tempered
moonlight. It looked, in fact, just as it had when she had seen it the
first time.

For a long moment the face stared deep, deep into her brain. Then the
full lips smiled and a half-clenched, thin-fingered hand materialized
itself from the green darkness and rapped twice on the grimy pane.

Her heart pounding, she furiously worked the little crank that opened
the window. It came unstuck from the frame with a tiny explosion of dust
and a _zing_ like that of the watch, only louder. A moment later it
swung open wide and a puff of incredibly fresh air caressed her face and
the inside of her nostrils, stinging her eyes with unanticipated tears.

The man outside balanced on the sill, crouching like a faun, head high,
one elbow on knee. He was dressed in scarred, snug trousers and an old
sweater.

"Is it tears I get for a welcome?" he mocked her gently in a musical
voice. "Or are those only to gree