"You win again. And I—I lose everything."
"So?" Treb touched his pocket torch to a heap of shredded dry twigs. "What have you lost? Your health, your life? And will not the woman forget all else and love you?"
"Hah! She will laugh at me if I come near her. Defeated, and with a paltry ten thousand to offer. Better that I died than this."
"Perhaps you do not—know this woman, Harl. If she is good, she will come to you."
The growing firelight was on Neilson's bearded face. And beneath his eyes something glistened and beaded. He laughed bitterly.
"She's not good, Treb, understand that. She's evil and money-hungry, and ambitious. But she is beautiful and I love her. I'd sell my soul and my body to possess her.
"That's why I volunteered. With the winners' grant I would have money. Prestige. Honor. There would be a thousand new opportunities for a career. And Jane could not refuse me then."
"It is wrong, Harl Neilson, to so worship a woman. Like alcohol or Venerian fire pollen—it is unnatural."
"I know. I have tried to forget, to put her memory aside. But it is like a disease. An incurable disease. I must have Jane."
Treb threw more wood on the little fire and checked over the lashings about Neilson's body.