"Is it really you? Have you returned—through the veil? Or is this somehow only a dream?"

He shook his head gently, smiling. "Not a dream, Leeta. I've come back—and through the veil. Back to stay."

Joy was a sudden brimming brightness in her eyes. "Then the love of which you told me—it was not just a trick?"

"No—and I'm going to prove it, Leeta." He drew her to him ... and knew, in the answering pressure of her lips, that he had convinced her.

He felt a deep content. Here was the world of his own that he had sought, and life had a meaning, a purpose it had lacked. Together he and Leeta would create a new race, as two others long before them had done, who had come from a place called Eden....