He heard his own thought on the augmenter, going on and on inexorably, against his own will: "There was a woman, the first I knew in this world. I stayed there too long. She wanted me, but we could not even speak. Somehow, I feel drawn back to her. And the thing that puzzled me, that terrified me ... she was knitting baby clothes, yet there was no man! No man ever came, there was only me. And I never even touched her, except by chance." The girl slipped her jumper on, zipped it up. Her face was suddenly grave, empty, and somehow sorry. Steve stopped thinking, listened to the augmenter and her thoughts. "Oh, no! I am sorry I intruded." Steve shook his head. He was trying hard not to understand the meaning of what he heard. It was like being led by the hand, like a child trying to break away from his mother's restraining hand. "What do you mean, you're sorry you intruded?" She smiled, a very peculiar smile, one of those female smiles that madden men so much, because they show him that sometimes women know things that men can never know. "You will understand one of these days, why I am sorry. I should have known. If I had looked I would have seen it in you already. It changes a man ... but you could not understand. It was inevitable. You were doomed when you set foot on this world." She laughed, and repeated, "Doomed, doomed," and she went out the door, a silvery laugh like a glass bell struck with a felt hammer. * * * * * Steve stood looking at the augmenter. He leaned over it, and his own thought beat back at him powerfully. "Go back, go back, or you will never escape! You will be another robot, with flesh like rock, and never again will the hot blood rush through your veins, never again...." But all at once he saw behind his own thought, and heard something deeper in his own mind, saying, "Go back, _she_ is waiting for you. The garden is waiting, the little house, the fields, the tiny barn, the tidy rooms, and her sweet perfection to serve you forever."