That green and distant Earth knew nothing yet of the battle fought and won beyond the edges of the Galaxy. But it had been Earth's battle too and she would know of it in time. Even to Earth, when a generation had passed, the starships would begin to go openly. And with their internecine conflicts past, Earth's young men too would go out among the stars to join the great march of Galactic Man. Who could say where that march might not lead them? To other galaxies, other island continents of suns.... Trehearne's thoughts came back from the immensities of the future when he saw the Silver Tower glimmering in the starlight. He left the car and walked toward it, and then he saw the pale figure on the shadowy beach beside the slow wash of the sea, and he went down to it. He put out his arms to her, but she held him off. She spoke to him, her voice clear, her face a white blur in the darkness. "I won't have hidden things between us, Michael. I want you to know. I hate you for what you've done to the Vardda. I'll always hate you for it." He stepped back and let his arms fall. "In that case," he said, "I'd better go." "No, wait." She came to him and put her hands on either side of his face, very gently, and she said, "I love you, in spite of everything. I don't know why. My mind keeps telling me all the reasons why I shouldn't, but--it's a queer thing, Michael. I've never been in love before. Will you have me on those grounds?" He held her this time, tight against him, and his lips brushed over hers as he answered, "Life with you won't be any haven of peace, I'm sure. But I knew that when I found you." Standing with her in the gloom, the sea-wind rumpling her white robe and tumbling her hair, memory tricked him back to that night on the Breton beach, centuries ago. So far and far he had come since then, and yet of it all that was almost his clearest memory. He knew now, with a wisdom that he had not had before, that it would always be so with a man--that it was not the conflicts and the pain and the triumph, not the empires and the stars and the struggles that the memory clung to the longest. It was the little things, the sound of a girl's laughter, the cry of birds on the sea-wind, the flare of a long-ago sunset, that a man held, that he would always hold, when everything else was gone.