"Love is something that we don't know here--not until we have been married and lived with our men. Sometimes not then." But she looked at me, and I thought there were tears in her eyes. Suddenly the impulse I had been resisting ever since the morning on the mountain became insupportable, and I caught her in my arms almost roughly. Her face was close to mine, and she closed her eyes. I kissed her, forgetting everything but the knowledge that I had stumbled upon the sort of love that doesn't pass away, no matter how long a man lives. After a while, though, she drew away as if she resisted not my desire, but her own. "No--" she said in a low voice, "no...." "But Selda!" I stammered, "I love you--I want to marry you." She shook her head. "No," she said again, "didn't you understand? I am scheduled to marry Edvar." At first I didn't know what she meant. "Scheduled?" I repeated dully. "I don't understand." "It has been arranged for years. Don't you remember what Edvar told you about our marriages here, the very first day you came? I was destined to marry Edvar long before any of us were born, before our parents, even, were born. It's the way they order our lives." "But I love you," I cried in amazement. "And you love me, too. I know you love me." "That means nothing here," she said. "It happens sometimes. One has to accept it. Nothing can be done. We live according to the machinery of the world. Everything is known and predetermined." * * * * * Suddenly, in the midst of what she was saying, close behind me there sounded even above the roaring of the waterfall a raucous noise like the hooting of a taxi horn. It was followed by a shrieking of brakes, and a hoarse voice near by shouted something angry and profane. A rush of air swept by me, and I heard faintly the sound of a motor moving away, with a grinding of gears. I looked at Selda. "Did you hear that?" She nodded, with wide, frightened eyes. "Yes. It's not the first time." Suddenly she rose, frowning, as if with pain. "Come," she added, "now we must go back." There was nothing else to do. We went back silently to the airship, and turned its nose toward the city. But when I left her at her apartment, promising to see her later, I had one last hope in my mind. I went to the Bureau. The Bureau was a vast system of halls and offices, occupying two floors of the great building. I was sent from one automatic device to another--there were no human clerks--in search of the representative who had spoken to me before. Finally I found him in his apartment, down the corridor only a hundred feet or so from my own. He was pouring over a metal sheet on his table, where innumerable shifting figures were thrown by some hidden machine, and he was calculating with a set of hundreds of buttons along its edges. He spoke to me without pausing or looking up, and throughout my interview he continued with his figuring as if it had been entirely automatic--as perhaps it was.