"You just think that I wouldn't"--nodding brightly. "The only trouble is that you always think of the wrong verses. Part of it really is descriptive of you. You know, where all the soldiers of the Black Tyrone thought so much of their captain?" She recited: "And worshiped with fluency, fervor, and zeal The mud on the boot heels of Crook O'Neil. "That describes you exactly." "You're crazy for the lack of sense," he demurred. "I don't rate like that." "Sure, you do," she assured him. "All the men think of you that way. And not only men. Women, too, darn 'em--and the very next time that I catch one of them at it I'm going to kick her cursed teeth out, one by one!" * * * * * Kinnison laughed, albeit a trifle sourly. "You're raving, Mac. Imagining things. But to get back to that poem, what I was referring to went like this--" "I know how it goes. Listen: "But the captain had quitted the long-drawn strife And in far Simoorie had taken a wife; "And she was a damsel of delicate mold, With hair like the sunshine and heart of gold. "And little she knew the arms that embraced Had cloven a man from the brow to the waist; "And little she knew that the loving lips Had ordered a quivering life's eclipse, "And the eyes that lit at her lightest breath Had glared unawed in the Gates of Death. "(For these be matters a man would hide, As a general thing, from an innocent bride.) "That's what you, mean, isn't it?" she asked quietly. "Mac, you know a lot of things that you've got no business knowing." Instead of answering her question, he stared at her speculatively. "My sprees and brawls, Dessa Desplaines and the Countess Avondrin, and now this. Would you mind telling me how you get the stuff?" "I'm closer to you than you suspect, Kim, and have been for a long time. Worsel calls it being 'en rapport,' I believe. You don't need to think at me--in fact, you have to put up a conscious block to keep me out. So I know a lot that I shouldn't, but Lensmen aren't the only ones who don't talk. You have been thinking about that poem a lot--it worried you--so I went to the library and looked it up. I memorized most of it." "Well, to get the true picture of me you'll have to multiply that by a thousand. Also, don't forget that loose heads might be rolling onto your breakfast table almost any morning instead of only once." "So what?" she countered evenly. "Do you think that I could sit for Kipling's portrait of Mrs. O'Neil? Nobody ever called my mold delicate, and he would have said of me: "With hair like a conflagration And a heart of solid brass! "Captain O'Neil's bride, as well as being innocent and ignorant, strikes me as having been a good deal of a sissy, something of a weeping willow, and no little of a shrinking violet. Tell me, Kim, do you think that she would have made good as a sector chief nurse?" "No, but that's neither here--"