"Really it is. Now that the requiem Mass has been held, the solemn one Mother wanted--it was almost like a real funeral. Everything looks different now." "Yes, I saw the announcement. I couldn't come, I had to finish his work." "I could envy you that," she said. Then, with a lifting in her tone: "I came back and slept. I woke up only an hour ago. It's like a curtain falling. Bruce is dead, and that will always hurt, but we can go on now with our own lives." He hovered on the edge of decision, wondering what to do, afraid of the ghoul she might think him. A line from _The Prince_ came: "_... it is better to be impetuous than cautious, for fortune is a woman_--" All right, he told himself. "There's one thing, Miss Lombardi." "Yes?" She waited patiently for him to sort out his words. "I haven't forgotten what you did say last night. I went ahead and looked into it, your ideas, I mean." "Oh?" A noncommittal noise, not openly skeptical. "I can tell you something you may feel better for." "What?" Caution, now, not of him but of the thing he might say. "The phone is hardly suitable. Could we get together in person?" "Well--" It stretched into seconds, which he found unnaturally long. Then, clearly, almost gaily: "Of course. Whenever you like." "This evening? You're at your parents' home still, aren't you?" "I'm going back to my own place today. But this evening will be fine." He said with careful dryness: "Bearing in mind that I am a somewhat respectable assistant professor of history and more than a decade your senior, may I suggest dinner?" She did actually chuckle that time. "Thank you, you may. No references needed; Bruce told me enough about you. And it's a good deal better than sitting alone brooding, isn't it?" He had gotten the address and a six-thirty date before he wholly realized what was going on. When the phone was back in its cradle, he sat for some indefinite time. _Oh, no!_ he thought at last. _Impossible. I'm too old to be romantic and too young to be tired._ He decided to eat before going back to the manuscript. While he went out for a sandwich and milkshake, while he walked back again, he twisted his attention to the problem of the book. It could have wrought a man's death, or it could only be a stack of inked parchment. Most likely the latter; but then who or what was L. L? The building was gloomy when he re-entered it from sunlight. Even his office seemed dark. It took his eyes a few seconds to register the fact that the book was gone. 9 Kintyre stood for a little while more, scarcely thinking.