Lucky merely purred. Or perhaps it was a small snore.
"Goodbye for good, Phil," Mitzie said, turning away.
"No, wait," Phil called suddenly, at last hunching groggily forward in his seat. "Don't go yet." He shook Lucky again, almost roughly. "Wake up," he demanded. "Stop her."
The small god hung in his hands like a limp green rag.
Phil put Lucky down on the seat beside him and started to get out of the car. But abruptly a wave of deep melancholy washed over him. He knew that something precious was slipping away from him, but he wasn't sure it was genuinely precious and he didn't know whether he had the right to stop it. Besides his god had failed him and he was still incredibly sleepy.
So he watched Mitzie slipping away from him as irrevocably as time, and did nothing except lift Lucky back on his lap. He watched her stride off along the misty shrubs like a proud and angry nymph, holding her back straight and her head very high, and also, he supposed, those charming and ridiculous breasts with which she insisted on facing the whole world.
For what seemed a long time he watched the dim, empty corner around which she had turned. He was frozen in a hypnotic daze that temporarily served for sleep. Now and then thoughts crossed his mind's dull expanse, but they were shadowy things and did not linger. Once it occurred to him that Lucky might have been unable to hold Mitzie because his earlier exertions had drained his powers; small gods couldn't be expected to exude several great golden waves without suffering some slight after effects.
It occurred to him that at this very moment he must be the object of furious searches by the Federal Bureau of Loyalty, Fun Incorporated's natty thugs, Romadka and his jolly friends, perhaps even good old Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck. Yet he felt neither fear nor any inclination to form a plan. The dim corner he was watching grew brighter but stayed empty.
Four feet defined themselves in the doughnut-shaped pressure on his lap. Lucky stretched, shook himself, looked up at Phil with the brightest sort of eyes, and said, "Prrrt-prt."
"You're a fine sort of cat," Phil complained grumpily, his own eyes feeling anything but bright. "Going to sleep just when I needed you most."