Lucifer tried to speak casually: "If someone comes, we'll know about it soon enough. Meanwhile, I suggest we try to get some sleep."
There was a strange weariness in her as she got up from the couch and started toward the bedroom, which Lucifer had sternly assigned to her after the first morning of awakening. But after a few steps, she stopped and turned back to him.
"Lucifer, they say you are the father of my baby. If that is so, I am grateful."
It was the first time they had mentioned the child. Lucifer felt shocked, and very humble. This was another new feeling. He decided it would be wisest not to speak.
"You are a man, Lucifer," she went on, in her husky voice. "I knew it when you tried to take that test, knowing you would fail."
She brushed her lips across his forehead.
"Goodnight, Lucifer. I have known many males, but very few men. There is a great difference...."
He lay awake on the couch for a long time, his body aching for sleep, his mind spinning with strange thoughts, stranger concepts. He was just beginning to slip into the twilight zone between wakefulness and troubled sleep when a foreign sound in the room jarred him awake.
Forcing himself to lie completely still, to continue his even breathing, he strained to catch a repetition of the sound; his eyes turned toward the rear window. The latest rain squall had swept by, and the window was now a luminous rectangle against a brilliant, star-filled sky.
As his vision cleared and focused, he saw that the casement window was partly open. A fresh breeze, warm and fragrant with the odors of the rain forest, swept across the couch.