A room materialized about him--a room almost the twin of his own basement laboratory. There was the workbench, there the desk. A frame close akin to that of the light-loop rose against one wall. A man sprawled on his back near the control panel. His face was Horning's face. Horning bent over him and felt for some trace of pulse, then straightened, to find Myrtle once more standing beside him. "He's dead," Horning said. She nodded. Her lips twitched. "Take off your unit." "My unit--?" "Yes," She gestured to the dead man. "Put it on him." "What--?" "I said, put it on him." All the flatness was back in Myrtle's voice. In a numb, aching void of silence, Horning obeyed. "Set the dials for 701-G-0060." Horning's fingers went stiff. He looked up at his wife, hardly believing his own ears. "You mean...?" "I mean, I'm going to the world that murdering monster in our basement came from!" Myrtle's breasts rose and fell in a sudden tempest of emotion. She was breathing noisily, too fast. The greying hair fell over her face, and her eyes were drawn to hot black pinpoints. "You wanted to get rid of me, didn't you? You were ready to try anything short of murder or sending me to the madhouse? So I'm leaving you here. That other woman had a fortune. I'll have a better life in her place than you ever gave me!" "But this man here...." "He died a natural death. That's all I care about. I'll be a widow--a wealthy widow...." * * * * * The words went on, but Horning hardly heard. He sagged back against the workbench--shaken, unable to speak. It was as if, of a sudden, he were seeing his wife through new eyes. She crowded close to him and said, "One other thing...." Her hand darted out. She snatched Margaret's picture from Horning's pocket--ripping it to shreds, scuffing the fragments. Horning made no effort to stop her. "I hate her!" Myrtle cried. "That woman--that creature--she could be dead a thousand years and I'd still hate her--!" She broke off, shaking, and switched both transit units' projector drives to high, then pressed the disintegrator buttons. In the tick of a clock, both woman and corpse had vanished. New weariness welled up in Horning ... weariness, and a sudden, stabbing pang of pity. In the awful emptiness of losing Margaret, he'd plunged down, all the way, till finally he'd been blinded and panicked into marrying Myrtle. Then, climbing from the depths once more, he'd come to hate her. Now, that, too, was past. The hate was dead; the bitterness had fallen from him. He knew the fault lay as much with him as her. They were simply dog and cat, not suited. He even found himself hoping she'd find happiness in the world to which she'd fled. It made him smile a little; and he knew it was good that he _could_ smile ... that he'd grown so much in depth and understanding.