"No, no!" he said in a quavering voice. "That would be unthinkable, blasphemous, sacrilegious! Have you no sense of beauty, degenerate slave that you are, that you would smash forever that most beautiful of all things made by the hands of man?" "I would." The Duke's mouth drew down at the corners; suddenly, he was weeping. Green was embarrassed, for he knew how great must be the emotion that could make this man, educated in a hard school, break down before an enemy. And he reflected upon what a strange thing a human being was. Here was a man who would literally allow his throat to be cut before he would display cowardice by bargaining for it. But to have his precious collection of glass birds threatened...! Green shrugged. Why try to understand it? The only thing to do was to use whatever came his way. "Very well, if you wish to save them you must do this." And he detailed exactly the Duke's moves and orders for the next ten minutes. He thereupon made him swear by the most holy oaths and upon his family name and by the honor of the founder of his family that he would not betray Green. "To make sure," added the Earthman, "I shall take the _exurotr_ with me. Once I know your word is good I'll take steps to see that it is returned undamaged to you." "Can I depend on that?" breathed the Duke hoarsely, rolling his big brown eyes. "Yes, I will contact Zingaro, Business Agent of the Thieves' Guild, and he will return it to you, for a compensation, of course. But before we conclude this bargain you must swear that you will not harm Amra, my wife, nor any of her children, nor confiscate her business but will behave toward her as if this had never happened." The Duke swallowed hard, but he swore. Green was happy, because, though he was going to desert Amra, he was at least insuring her future. It was a long, long hour later that Green came out of his hiding place inside a large closet in the Duke's apartment. Even though the Duke had sworn the holiest of oaths, he was as treacherous as any of the barbarians on this planet, and that was very treacherous indeed. Green had stood behind the door, sweating and listening to the loud and sometimes incoherent conversation taking place between the Duke, his soldiers and the Duchess. The Duke was a good actor, for he convinced everybody that he had escaped from the mad slave Green, had seized a sword and forced him to make a running broad jump from the balcony railing. Of course, several guardsmen had seen a large man-sized object hurtle from the balcony and fall with a loud splash into the moat below. There was no doubt that the slave must have broken his back when he struck the water or else he had been knocked out and then drowned. Whatever had happened, he had not come out.