The hands withdrew, leaving emptiness--but her heartbeat slowed and the pink haze cleared and she could see his face. And with a surge of terror and triumph she realized what she saw! That hard bright look that encompassed and possessed her! The curved lips drawn over white, white teeth! The flared nostrils! The hungry demand upon his face that answered the demand in her heart! And she knew--at last--with a knowledge that turned her limbs to water, that she had found favor in his eyes! CHAPTER XI Mixed emotion! Ha! The author of that cliche didn’t even know its meaning! Kennon strode furiously down the dusty road toward Station One trying to sublimate his inner conflict into action. It was useless, of course, for once he stopped moving the grim tug-of-war between training and desire would begin again, and no matter how it ended the result would be unsatisfactory. As long as he had been able to delude himself that he was fond of Copper the way a man is fond of some lesser species, it had been all right. But he knew now that he was fond of her as a man is of a woman--and it was hell! For no rationalization in the universe would allow him to define her as human. Copper was humanoid--something like human. And to live with her and love her would not be miscegenation, which was bad enough, but bestiality which was a thousand times worse. Although throughout most of the Brotherhood miscegenation was an unknown word, and even bestiality had become a loose definition on many worlds with humanoid populations, the words had definite meaning and moral force to a Betan. And--God help him--he was a Betan. A lifetime of training in a moral code that frowned upon mixed marriages and shrank appalled from even the thought of mixing species was nothing to bring face to face with the fact that he loved Copper. It was odd, Kennon reflected bitterly, that humans could do with animals what their customs and codes prohibited them from doing to themselves. For thousands of years--back to the very dawn of history when men had bred horses and asses to produce mules--men had been mixing species to produce useful hybrids. Yet a Betan who could hybridize plants or animals with complete equanimity shrank with horror from the thought of applying the same technique to himself. What was there about a human being that was so sacrosanct? He shook his head angrily. He didn’t know. There was no answer. But the idea--the belief--was there, ingrained into his attitudes, a part of his outlook, built carefully block by block from infancy until it now towered into a mighty wall that barred him from doing what he wished to do.