Murt raised the beaker to his lips. It was against every sensible tenet of scientific procedure. He was amazed that Phyllis was silent as he swallowed the bland, chalky fluid. He heard a clink. Turning, he saw her raising the graduate to her lips. In it was a like quantity of sulfa-tetradine. "What are you doing?" he half-shouted. "We don't need a test-control!" "I'm not a control," she said softly, touching her lips with a scrap of gauze. "I've had the virus for months." He stared at her unbelievingly. "How do you know?" "One of the first test samples was my own blood," she said. "You saw it. It was one of the twelve positive." "But the symptoms--you don't show a sign of--" "Thanks," she said. "I started to break down yesterday, but you didn't notice. You see, you are my fixation and when you told me that you had it, too, I--" "_Your_ fixation!" The beaker slipped from his fingers and smashed to the tile. "_You're in love with me?_" Her arms hung loosely at her sides and tears rimmed her eyes. "Pathologically or otherwise, I've been a case since before I started the blood tests." They moved together and clung to each other. "Phyl, Phyl--why didn't you tell me?" * * * * * Fiercely, she closed his lips with her own, and her fingers dug deeply into his shoulders. His arms pulled her closer yet, trying to fill the void in him that was greater than the Universe. For a long minute, the knowledge of her love and physical contact with her straining body dispelled the bleak loneliness. When their lips parted, they gasped for breath. It was no good. It was like tearing at an itching insect bite with your fingernails. The relief was only momentary, and it left the wound bleeding and more irritated than ever. Even if they were married--look at Peter at the club--Peter and his wife, mutually in love and completely miserable. It wasn't normal love. It was the damned virus! As well argue with gravity. He tried to tell her, but he couldn't make her understand. Her restraint had been magnificent, but when the dam broke, it was beyond stopping the flood of her emotion. And now he couldn't believe it himself. Nothing this wonderful could be destroyed by mere misunderstanding. He cursed the years of his celibacy. All that time wasted--lost! It was six o'clock before they reached her apartment. The License Bureau had been a mob scene. Hours more, upstairs in the City Hall waiting for the judge, while they held hands like a pair of college sophomores, staring into each others' eyes, drinking, drinking the elixir of adoration with a thirst that wouldn't be sated. Phyllis weakened first. In the cab, after the ceremony, she released his hand and wiped her damp forehead. Then, in the elevator, Murt felt himself relaxing. The alchemy of sustained passion had exhausted them both, he decided.