"There's no danger," she said softly, "of my getting in trouble for non-voting." * * * * * He suddenly remembered the words of the Speakster, and dropped the girl's hand as though it had burnt him. "You--You're the--" "Please!" begged the girl, before his voice could rise in a warning shout to the crowd. "Don't give me away!" "They'll get you anyhow," he said flatly, with a note of near-pity in his voice. "By rights, I should raise a cry right this instant, to save the Goons the trouble of checking all the _good_ Kinsmen." A secondary thought hit him, and he took a very short step backward. "And you're diseased. The longer you remain in contact with the crowd, the more likely a spread of the contagion." "I'm _not_!" she almost shouted, then clenched her jaws, and got control of herself. Bright moisture began to trickle from the corners of her eyes, and she dabbed angrily at the warm salty drops. "I was hurt, yes!" she said, suddenly pulling back the long sleeve of her bright green dress, for a brief moment. Lloyd saw the ragged, pink-edged cicatrix on the underside of her forearm, and winced. "It's healed," she said. "I didn't _need_ the hospital, don't you see?" Lloyd saw, and stood there, his mind fumbling dizzily for a direction to take. The last straggling ends of the crowd were moving into the arcades, now. Lloyd took his bearings, saw that only one or two people were now headed for his own arcade, and began to back off in that direction, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so terribly sorry. I must go, now." She nodded, once, then turned her back on him, and stood, small and helpless, in the growing void that was the Temple proper. Lloyd turned from her and started toward his arcade. Then he stopped and looked back at her. She _was_ healed, after all.... He remembered with a sense of shame the time he'd broken a finger, and hadn't reported for hospital assignment, because a favorite cowboy was at the neighborhood theatre that afternoon. He never _had_ gone in, then, being fearful lest the examining doctors notice that he'd delayed. The finger had healed itself, a trifle crookedly, and Lloyd had never told anyone of his dereliction, not even his father. Especially not his father. * * * * * Suddenly, he turned and ran back to the girl. "Do they know you?" he said, fiercely, frightened by his own daring. "Wh--Who?" gasped the girl, startled by his reappearance. "_Who_ know me?" Then, catching his meaning, "The goons, you mean?" Lloyd nodded impatiently. "No, they don't. But they don't have to. I--I have no Voteplate." "Can't you girls hang onto _anything_?!" he muttered. "Don't tell me _yours_ fell in the sea from a Tourgyro?" "You say that as though you know somebody whose _did_," said the girl. "My fiancee," he explained, adding, with an embarrassed grin, "I'll be twenty-five just after next Marriage Day. I found her in the phonebook listings."