Late summer sunshine lay over the porch in a flood of radiance as rich as melted butter. Fran stood very quietly for a moment, letting the warmth bathe her. She drew the fragrant morning air deep into her lungs and felt the breeze caress her face and arms. Her brown hair changed subtly in the light, became a gold-glinting auburn, and a faint golden flush spread through her skin. She was dimly aware of the pigmentation adjustment, but she did not try to control it just then. The chameleon effect, Tom called it, one of several protective devices that nature had furnished her kind for survival against the members of a hostile race. She let the impressions drift like smoke through her mind, releasing herself wholly to the beauty of the morning. She arched forward on the tips of her bare toes, her slender body straining against the threadbare fabric of her dress to outline the firm, gently rounded curves of growing maturity. She had a feeling of vibrant, singing strength, as though she could launch herself with the effortlessness of a bird into the gold-hazed, green distance and soar tirelessly to the very end of the world. She had a depth and clarity of perception that seemed to her capable of embracing green earth and blue sky in one vast, magnificent sweep. She had a delighted sense of freedom, as though released from the cocoon of hiding and caution in which she had kept herself during the past months. For a superb instant she felt free and gloriously happy--and she wanted to tell Tom, to share her emotions with him. Her thoughts turned to him with increasing frequency. She felt a growing need for his invisible presence and the comfort it gave. She had only to spread the gossamer fabric of her mind like vast butterfly wings, shimmering and iridescent with her exalted sensations, and Tom would be there, as he so often was in the moon-bathed stillness of the night. Tom, so patient, so earnest and kind, his quiet strength the foundation upon which the structure of her own being had come to rest. But she did not reach out to him. She slumped, and the surging loveliness in her faded. Her small face turned wistful. Tom would be there--but reserved as always, somehow withdrawn from her. It was as though he kept a barrier between them, a sort of immaterial wall that made the intimacy of their mental contact an almost purely one-sided thing. It hurt and puzzled her, and the hurt had grown as Tom's importance to her had grown. She wondered if the wall would always be there. Didn't Tom sense her disappointment and the reluctance of her own restraint? * * * * * Her eyes caught a flicker of movement across the yard, and she looked up to see Sammy and Davey walking toward her from the direction of the barn. She retreated back into her shell of caution.