He felt positive that it was only a temporary aberration; she was, after all, a Citizeness, with all that that implied. A--a creature--like that Gala Tropile, for example--someone like that might steal extra portions with craft and guile. You couldn't live with a Wolf for years and not have some of it rub off on you. But not Citizeness Germyn. There was a light, thrice-repeated tap on the door. Speak of the devil, thought Roget Germyn most appropriately; for it was that same Gala Tropile. She entered, her head downcast, looking worn and--well, pretty. He began formally: "I give you greeting, Citi--" "They're here!" she interrupted in desperate haste. Germyn blinked. "Please," she begged, "can't you do something? They're _Wolves_!" Citizeness Germyn emitted a muted shriek. "You may leave, Citizeness," Germyn told her shortly, already forming in his mind the words of gentle reproof he would later use. "Now what is all this talk of Wolves?" Gala Tropile distractedly sat in the chair her hostess had vacated. "We were running away," she babbled. "Glenn--he was Wolf, you see, and he made me leave with him, after the House of the Five Regulations. We were a day's long march from Wheeling and we stopped to rest. And there was an aircraft, Citizen!" "An aircraft!" Citizen Germyn allowed himself a frown. "Citizeness, it is not well to invent things which are not so." "I saw it, Citizen! There were men in it. One of them is here again! He came looking for me with another man and I barely escaped him. I'm afraid!" "There is no cause for fear, only an opportunity to appreciate," Citizen Germyn said mechanically--it was what one told one's children. But within himself, he was finding it very hard to remain calm. That word Wolf--it was a destroyer of calm, an incitement to panic and hatred! He remembered Tropile well, and there was Wolf, to be sure. The mere fact that Citizen Germyn had doubted his Wolfishness at first was powerful cause to be doubly convinced of it now; he had postponed the day of reckoning for an enemy of all the world, and there was enough secret guilt in his recollection to set his own heart thumping. "Tell me exactly what happened," said Citizen Germyn, in words that the stress of emotion had already made far less than graceful. Obediently, Gala Tropile said: "I was returning to my home after the evening meal and Citizeness Puffin--she took me in after Citizen Tropile--after my husband was--" "I understand. You made your home with her." "Yes. She told me that two men had come to see me. They spoke badly, she said, and I was alarmed. I peered through a window of my home and they were there. One had been in the aircraft I saw! And they flew away with my husband." "It is a matter of seriousness," Citizen Germyn admitted doubtfully. "So then you came here to me?" "Yes, but they saw me, Citizen! And I think they followed. You must protect me--I have no one else!"