"I did think you were courageous there," Phil temporized, wondering why the devil Lucky's power, that had softened twenty men at a crack, was so slow in taking effect on a single misguided girl. "Spare me any praise that's a cover for slop," Mitzie said scathingly. "Oh I know what that Sunday school beast there on your lap can do, and I know what you want to see happen. I have only one thing that's titanium in me, all the rest is stinking mush. You want to see that one thing break. No, worse, you want to see it soften. Well, I'm not going to let that happen." She stood up and took her hands off the door. Suddenly Phil felt a kind of sleepy worry. He ran his hand over Lucky's fur, then shook him hesitatingly. "Wake up," he said uneasily. Lucky merely purred. Or perhaps it was a small snore. "Goodbye for good, Phil," Mitzie said, turning away. "No, wait," Phil called suddenly, at last hunching groggily forward in his seat. "Don't go yet." He shook Lucky again, almost roughly. "Wake up," he demanded. "Stop her." The small god hung in his hands like a limp green rag. Phil put Lucky down on the seat beside him and started to get out of the car. But abruptly a wave of deep melancholy washed over him. He knew that something precious was slipping away from him, but he wasn't sure it was genuinely precious and he didn't know whether he had the right to stop it. Besides his god had failed him and he was still incredibly sleepy. So he watched Mitzie slipping away from him as irrevocably as time, and did nothing except lift Lucky back on his lap. He watched her stride off along the misty shrubs like a proud and angry nymph, holding her back straight and her head very high, and also, he supposed, those charming and ridiculous breasts with which she insisted on facing the whole world. For what seemed a long time he watched the dim, empty corner around which she had turned. He was frozen in a hypnotic daze that temporarily served for sleep. Now and then thoughts crossed his mind's dull expanse, but they were shadowy things and did not linger. Once it occurred to him that Lucky might have been unable to hold Mitzie because his earlier exertions had drained his powers; small gods couldn't be expected to exude several great golden waves without suffering some slight after effects. It occurred to him that at this very moment he must be the object of furious searches by the Federal Bureau of Loyalty, Fun Incorporated's natty thugs, Romadka and his jolly friends, perhaps even good old Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck. Yet he felt neither fear nor any inclination to form a plan. The dim corner he was watching grew brighter but stayed empty. Four feet defined themselves in the doughnut-shaped pressure on his lap. Lucky stretched, shook himself, looked up at Phil with the brightest sort of eyes, and said, "Prrrt-prt."