The amount came perilously close to the figure to which Drake's capital had dwindled. Nevertheless, he did not haggle, but counted the hundred-credit notes out. The King removed the realitape from the proscenium projector, and the exchange was made. "You are getting a bargain, Mr. Drake," the King said. "For a collector's item like that, I could get twice six hundred Rockefellows." "When did she leave here?" Drake asked. "About a year after she arrived. A big year. I went to her room after one of her dances and found her gone. Her clothes, everything.... For all her willingness to exhibit herself, she was never really one of us. She would never permit any of us to get close to her in any sense of the word. There was something tragic about her. She said once that she could not bear children, but I do not think that this had very much to do with her unhappiness. She _was_ unhappy, you know, although she was very careful never to let on." The King raised his eyes, and Drake was dumfounded to see tears in them. "You have told me that after she left Worldwellost she became a saint. Somehow this does not surprise me. There is an exceedingly thin line between good and evil. Most of us manage to walk this line with a greater or lesser degree of equilibrium, but I think Mary Legs could not walk it at all: with her, I think it had to be one side or the other. Evil, she found intolerable after a while, and she ran away, crossing the line to good. But good, she eventually found intolerable too, and she ran away again. She told you that she wished to be put down on Iago Iago to witness a resurrection. This, I do not believe. Real or not, the resurrection was an excuse for her. I believe that she was searching for a way of life that would combine the two extremes of good and evil and that she hoped to find it among the primitive Polysirians. And I think that she also hoped to find a man who would understand her and accept her for what she was. Do you think I may be right, Nathaniel Drake?" "I don't know," Drake said. Abruptly he stood up. "I'll be on my way now." King Tutankhamen touched his arm. "The question which I am about to ask is an exceedingly delicate one, Nathaniel Drake. I hope you will not take offense?" Drake sighed wearily. "Ask it then, and get it over with." "By any chance, are you of Dutch descent?" "No," Drake said, and left. * * * * * Three of the six months which Pastelsilks, Inc. had given Drake to sell his cargo had now passed, and his cargo was undiminished by so much as a single bolt of blue. His capital, on the other hand, was virtually exhausted. Even _Der Fliegende Holländer_ had never had it so bad.