He reached out and touched her and the softness of her flesh, beneath the now-limp nightgown, was as real as the touch of his own. Sudden terror struck him as he accepted emotionally for the first time the fact that Belvoir might not be a substance created by his own subconscious. If Belvoir were real, then he would never see her again. "Charles darling, are you ill?" He looked down, discovered that he was gripping the dessert spoon in his fingers as if it were a weapon. He unlocked clamped jaws and said, "Sorry, Debby, I'm okay. Now--I'd like to take a look at the arrangements Ortine has made for our return." She rose quickly and he followed her out. The gates to and from Belvoir, she showed him, were directly opposite the cubicles, one to each cubicle. Deborah entered the one opposite her own chamber, revealing a featureless room, just large enough to contain her portable bed. At its far end was an opaque wall. She shivered, said softly, "I like not this place, Charles. Yet it is through these chambers that all of us were brought to Belvoir, through them that we must make our return journeys. Charles, I am afeard." "You and me both," he told her. "Come on to my place and let's see if we cannot dope something out." She looked puzzled by his twentieth-century phrases but went with him dutifully. Before entering he tested the portal opposite his own cubicle, found it exactly similar to hers. Deborah had to pluck at his sleeve to remind him she was there. She said, "Verily thee are far from me much of the time." "Not so far," he replied, leading her into his cubicle. At once her soft strong young arms went around him, her lips sought hungrily for his. He summoned the strength to thrust her from him, said, "Not now, honey--we've got a lot of thinking to do and we may not have much time to do it in." She subsided meekly and sat down beside him on the portable cot. She said, "I too have the same feeling, Darling Charles." "Listen, honey," he told her after a minute. "You say you have never dreamed of a man like me?" "How could I?" she countered simply. "In my time no man such as thee exists. Perhaps the king in London Town, or the Crown Prince...." "Listen, honey--the only chance we have to stay together is to go out of here together on the same bed." He gave the couch beneath them a slap. "Durst we?" Her voice was tiny but there was a compensating blaze of sudden hope in her blue eyes. "We'll dare anything," Justin retorted, "because the worst thing that could happen to either of us right now is to be separated. We durst--now the question is, who goes back into whose time?" "I should love to visit thine era, Darling Charles." "I'd love to have you," he replied. "But for ten years now I've been wanting to see yours. We're going back to your life together." "But Charles!" Her eyes grew round with fright. "Ye can't! Think on it--we might awaken in bed together and--" "Would that be bad?" he asked.