"I'm not scared. But don't you think you might tell me why?"
He shook his head.
"I can't, right now. I've told you more than I should have already, as a matter of fact. But I had to warn you. Beyond that, the less you know, the safer you'll be. And I may. be exaggerating. You can probably brush it off. You recognised me from a picture you saw once, and you were good and mad, so you threw out that parting crack just to make trouble. Then I picked you up outside, and you thought I'd been nice, so you just bought me a drink. That's the only connection we have."
"Well, so it is. But if this is something exciting, like the things I fell in love with you for, why can't I be in on it?"
"Because you sing much too nicely, and the ungodly are awful unmusical."
"Oh, fish," she said.
He grinned, and finished his drink, and put down the glass.
"Throw me out, Avalon," he said. "In another minute dawn is going to be breaking, and I'm going to shudder when I hear the crash."
And this was it, this was the impossible and inevitable, and he knew all at once now that it could never have been any other way.
She said: "Don't go."