Her face was a blurred oval, her eyes like misty jewels.
"Everything you have is mine? You give it to me without hindrance and of your own free choice?"
Somewhere a trap.
But the voice was irresistibly coaxing, like tickling fingers.
"All you have is mine? Just say it once, Norm, just once. For me."
Of course he loved her. Better than anything else in the world.
"Yes ... yes ... everything—" he heard himself saying.
And then his mind toppled and plunged down into a fathomless ocean of darkness, and silence, and peace.
IX.