Dyall's dark face flushed and his hands tightened on his cane. "But I had a right to do what I did. And I hurt only one person. Two, if you include me. Give me credit, at least, for the smallness of my scope." Hubbard glanced at Megan. And Dyall broke into the shrill cackle of an old man. "But you know, you _know_, and still you think of her! How sentimental can you get? Don't you realize--" "How much does she?" Hubbard said. "How much do you?" Emrys had become nearly frantic with frustration and bewilderment. He was the one who had secrets; nobody else. Nothing was to be kept hidden from _him_! "What are you two blabbering about?" he almost screamed. "It doesn't make sense--any of it!" Hubbard turned toward him, his head and neck moving with the deliberate precision of a piece of clockwork. "It makes very good sense, Jan. I realized that I could find out nothing more from the stars, so I turned my researches back to Earth. I've been investigating Mr. Dyall." "What did you find?" Emrys asked tensely. Why did Peter call him by his former name in front of his former enemy? Had the old fool forgotten his promise, or had he broken it on purpose? "_What did you find out?_" he repeated. Hubbard's voice was filled with pity. "Just this: Nicholas Dyall never did marry Alissa Embel." Emrys' fear exploded into a scarlet rage. "Then Megan is--" He advanced on Dyall, his fists clenched. "If you took Alissa and then didn't--" Hubbard caught his arm in a frail grip. "Don't be so hasty, Emrys. Dyall did no wrong to Alissa Embel, whatever wrong he may have done to you." "Thank you," Dyall murmured, "for granting me that I gave her all I had, but it wasn't what she wanted. She wanted--" his old eyes were filled with hate as he looked at Emrys--"you." "Alissa Embel killed herself on the day before the wedding," Hubbard told Emrys. "She, as we attorneys say, died without issue." * * * * * Emrys was glad that, since he could not have had Alissa, Dyall had not, either. At the same time, he felt an overwhelmingly poignant sense of sorrow, that he should have had three full lifetimes, and the woman he had loved--insofar as Jan Shortmire had been capable of love--not even one. He raised dull eyes to the two old men. "Then who is Megan?" Hubbard hesitated. But what worse could there be to tell? And then the lawyer asked a ridiculous question, "Jan, do you know why Dyall's machines didn't meet popular favor until he changed them?" Emrys plunged back once again into the well of his memories. "Nobody wanted to buy machines that looked too much like people; it made them ... uncomfortable. So Dyall stopped designing robots and made machines adapted to their separate functions and--" His voice became a cry of anguish. "_Megan!_" She turned her bland, smiling doll face toward him. "I'm sorry, Emrys," the sweet voice said.