"Don't put the blame on _me_, Len Mattern!" Angry tears stood in her eyes. "I never wanted anybody to do _that_ much for me. All I wanted were nice things and somebody to take care of me and maybe love me. I never wanted to have the whole universe risked for me." Her voice broke on the truth. "Nobody's worth all that!" She was right, he thought--being given too much can be worse than being given too little. The words spilled out of her; he'd been so disenchanted by her stupidity that he gave her credit for less understanding than she did have. "You wouldn't've been able to wait fifteen-sixteen years for me if you really loved me. But you were _happy_ the way you were--you and that extraterrestrial of yours. All you wanted was to dream about me. You were a fool ever to have come back for me; you shoulda stuck with your dreams." * * * * * And again, he knew, she was right. He felt very tired and empty, the way he'd felt after Schiemann and Balas had died, as if nothing mattered any more. He didn't argue with her. "What would you do if you left me, Lyddy?" he asked gently. "I can always--" she swallowed--"go back to my old job, I guess." Alard gave an exclamation of horror, and Mattern agreed in his mind that that solution would never do. Beyond a doubt, she was his responsibility. And so was Alard. Why had he ever longed for a family? And then an outside mind joined in with his and he knew what to do. "Alard," he said, "before, I offered to do something for you. Now I'm not going to do anything for you, not a damn thing." Alard drew himself erect. "I wouldn't expect you to, see? Even if you wanted to, I wouldn't take--" "I want you to do something for me," Mattern cut in. Alard paled, then flushed with anger. "If this is some half-baked way of thinking you can make up for things without me feeling--" "Hear me out before you leap to conclusions. You said that you loved my wife...." Lyddy gave a moan. "You know he was only stringing me along to get back at you." "He wouldn't have done that," said Mattern. "Not a fine, upstanding boy like Alard, no matter how much he hated me. You really love Lyddy, don't you, Alard--as you said before?" The boy looked frightened. "Only in a manner of speaking," he said quickly. "I was trying to make you jealous. I think of her as a sister--a sister-in-law." "She's very beautiful," Mattern reminded him. And the xhindi _had_ done their work well. She hadn't changed; they had preserved her for him just as she had been sixteen years before. If only they had let her change, then things might have worked out. They could have kept the body from growing old without holding back the mind--or had they not held back the mind? Was this the fullest maturity it was capable of? "A man who has her as his wife should be very happy," Mattern pointed out. "You wouldn't want her to go back to what she'd been doing, and she won't stay with me."