“Well--four and a half months or so, around there, I guess.” “Stand up.” She did. “Yeah. I guess so,” he said, and sat back again. “It _could_ be--at four-and-a-half--with _you_. I’ll be damned!” He was watching her closely, and, she realized, with a warmth of affection that made all the rest of the mess _much_ easier. “So?” he said. “For heaven’s sake, sit down, Lee. I’ve had my look.” She sat. “Now: I guess that means you--” “It doesn’t mean anything one way or the other, Phil. It just means that whatever the rest means is _more_ so, that’s all.” Here she was on solid ground. _This_ part she’d thought out beforehand, and carefully. “The thing is, Phil, that other time even, when I first _thought_ I might be pregnant, I realized I couldn’t go through with it the way things were.” She saw his slight start, and smiled. “I don’t mean _that_. I meant _marrying_ him. I--” She had kept herself beautifully under control up to then, but suddenly everything inside was clogging up. “I--” She stood up. She walked around the room, sat down at last on the couch, behind his back. “I decided,” she said carefully, “that unless things changed a _lot_ at home, if it turned out I was, I would just leave, and not--I mean, not even _tell_ him.” “But you didn’t. Hold up! _Does he know or not?_” She shook her head. “No.” She looked up at him, feeling awfully foolish for some reason. But it made _sense_, it all made sense, this part of it. She’d thought it all through, and through again. “Look, Phil, I wasn’t just being--well, emotional. I really meant it that way. But then, right at that time, Chris came down, and Johnny agreed to the trip--and then he kept putting it off, all summer long, and every time I thought, ‘He won’t do it after all,’ he’d set a date, and every time it got close--well, you _know_.” She had to stop, and get the clogged-up stuff clear inside again. Phil just stood there. He put a hand on her shoulder, and she groped for it with her hand, held on to it _hard_, and found she could talk again. “Don’t you _see_, Phil?” Her voice was a wail, but she didn’t care. Her face was streaked with tears; it didn’t matter. “Don’t _you_ see? I--I couldn’t let _Johnny’s_ child grow up with--oh _Hell_!--with _Johnny_ for a father. The way he’s been. _Could I?_” “Oh, you poor kid!” Lisa was silent a moment. Then: “This won’t stop me dancing, I think?” “No ... no reason it should, for a while.” She took a deep breath. “All right. I want the job, Phil ... and the sooner I get started the better. Lisa Trovi, Famed Tri-Di Star, will give an impromptu recital in just one hour....” _Dollars Dome--Monday, September 5, 11_ P.M. (_C.S.T._) Mounting with the beat of the bongos, she climbed to the pinnacle in step with the quickening pulse of the piano; then poised, spread-winged, against the high-flying clarinet’s sharp sweetness.