He cleared his throat. He'd taken Sandy out to dinner, ostensibly to celebrate the completion of a development job for Interiors, Inc. Burke had started Burke Development, Inc., some four years out of college when he found he didn't like working for other people and could work for himself. Its function was to develop designs and processes for companies too small to have research-and-development divisions of their own. The latest, now-finished, job was a wall-garden which those expensive interior decorators, Interiors, Inc., believed might appeal to the very rich. Burke had made it. It was a hydroponic job. A rich man's house could have one or more walls which looked like a grassy sward stood on edge, with occasional small flowers or even fruits growing from its close-clipped surface.[A] [Footnote A: Transcriber's Note: The following sentence has been deleted at this point: "Interiors, Inc., would push the idea of a a bomb shelter or in an atomic submarine where it would cation." This is a possible printer error. A later edition of this work also has this sentence deleted. It was done. A production-job room-wall had been shipped and the check for it banked. Burke had toyed with the idea that growing vegetation like that might be useful in a bomb shelter or in an atomic submarine where it would keep the air fresh indefinitely. But such ideas were for the future. They had nothing to do with now. Now Burke was going to triumph over an obsessive dream. "I've got something to say, Sandy," said Burke painfully. She did not turn her head. There was moonlight, rippling water, and the tranquil noises of the night in springtime. A perfect setting for what Burke had in mind, and what Sandy knew about in advance. She waited, her eyes turned away from him so he wouldn't see that they were shining a little. "I'm something of an idiot," said Burke, clumsily. "It's only fair to tell you about it. I'm subject to a psychological gimmick that a girl I--Hm." He coughed. "I think I ought to tell you about it." "Why?" asked Sandy, still not looking in his direction. "Because I want to be fair," said Burke. "I'm a sort of crackpot. You've noticed it, of course." Sandy considered. "No-o-o-o," she said measuredly. "I think you're pretty normal, except--No. I think you're all right." "Unfortunately," he told her, "I'm not. Ever since I was a kid I've been bothered by a delusion, if that's what it is. It doesn't make sense. It couldn't. But it made me take up engineering, I think, and ..." His voice trailed away. "And what?" "Made an idiot out of me," said Burke. "I was always pretty crazy about you, and it seems to me that I took you to a lot of dances and such in high school, but I couldn't act romantic. I wanted to, but I couldn't. There was this crazy delusion...." "I wondered, a little," said Sandy, smiling. "I _wanted_ to be romantic about you," he told her urgently. "But this damned obsession kept me from it."