"Are you looking for a book, Dr. Chase?"
"No, I just wondered what was interesting you so much."
She shifted her seat, to let him see a large sheet of rough drawing paper covered with a chalk sketch of a desolate gray marsh over which green waves swirled from the sea, behind them loomed rose-colored granite hills.
"I'm a scene designer, you know. But at home, somehow, I never have time to myself. People will never believe I'm serious, and when I want to get some real work done, I run away on a trip, by myself. Right now I'm sketching out a set for a new stereodrama we're staging next autumn. This particular one is for a melancholy suicide on Venus. I've several more here." She pointed to a scattered heap of drawings.
The soft chime of the library telephone interrupted them. Tanya rose and moved to the desk.
"Yes? Not now, youngster. I'm working. Yes, maybe tomorrow."
Alan had been examining her drawings. "Is this what you do during the hours when you disappear?".
"Usually. Sometimes I drop into the playroom to chat with the children. They're more interesting than their parents, for the most part, and nobody ever seems to pay much attention to them."
"But do you have to work at night, too? When you disappear in the middle of the evening, everybody misses you. The men all watch for you to come back, their wives sigh with relief, and old man Jasperson toddles around and searches the dance floor and bleats, 'Where's Miss Tanya? She was here just a little while ago, and now I can't find her anywhere!'"