"See you at the lift in about an hour," he said and headed for the advertising agency where Janith was employed. * * * * * "We haven't been informed as to her whereabouts yet, Mr. Duggan," the receptionist at Duffey's offices said coldly. Duggan glared down into the carefully pretty face, the solar-lamp tan and the knife-smoothed wrinkles. "Now see here, Blanche," he said, and spluttered impotently. "See here yourself, Merle Duggan," the woman spat back sharply. "After all! You come running back just because she's hurt. Why didn't you come back like this a year ago?" "I was with her a year ago." "That wasn't you. You didn't have guts enough to rent a super mech and go back to your old job." The woman laughed. "Janith tried to insult and needle you into being a man again. And you just crawled." "That's a lie," Duggan cried. "I begged her to let me go back. She wouldn't listen." "That's what you say now. You don't want to remember. I know. I was here all the time. Many a time Janith has come to the office, crying, and told me how hopeless it seemed." "You're--you're inventing all this, Blanche," he accused. "I wish I were. Remember, Merle. Think. Be honest with yourself." Blanche put her nervous, blue-veined hand on his arm. A detached part of his brain noted how bony and brittle her hand was. "She's loved you all these years, Merle." The tiny hand dug into his jacket sleeve. "To make you well again she risked losing your love--and she lost." Blanche must be all of fifty, perhaps fifty-five, the analytical portion of his mind noted. Old-maidish in many ways, despite her five ex-husbands; yet so sentimental-- "It's all part of her scheme. Pretend to be the patient, long-suffering wife and then secretly forbid me to go back to the deep levels again! You don't know!" The woman's tired eyes sparkled green. Her little fist cracked against his chest. She turned half away from him. "But I do know. I sat up with you many nights, while Janith got a few hours of rest. You were like a baby, slobbering and whimpering in your sleep. The days were worse. You were drunk and shouting and weeping. To you blindness was the end." Merle gulped. He could remember nothing of the sort. Only the accident and awakening in the hospital to darkness.... But there was a strange blankness, a hiatus in his memories, that ended with his hated job in the cigar stand. He could not recall his first day there or-- Could Blanche be telling the truth? "You--spiteful old hag!" he shouted at her, and rushed out of the offices. His feet pounded at the yielding softness of the walkway. The hospital was less than two blocks distant--no need to take a travel strip--and he needed the automatic motion of walking to steady his thoughts.