My mind curled its lip. Pappy had tanned my landing gear until I was out of the habit of using mother for protection against the slings and arrows of outrageous schoolchums. I'd not taken sanctuary behind a woman's skirts since I was eight. So the idea of running under the protection of a woman went against the grain, even though I knew that she was my physical superior by no sensible proportion. Being cared for physically by a dame of a hundred-ten—
"Eighteen."
—didn't sit well on me.
"Do you believe me, Steve?"
"I've got to. You're here to stay. I'm a sucker for a good-looking woman anyway, it seems. They tell me anything and I'm not hardhearted enough to even indicate that I don't believe them."
She took my arm impulsively; then she let me go before she pinched it off at the elbow. "Steve," she said earnestly, "Believe me and let me be your—"
#Better half?# I finished sourly.
"Please don't," she said plaintively. "Steve, you've simply got to trust somebody!"
I looked into her face coldly. "The hardest job in the world for a non-telepath is to locate someone he can trust. The next hardest is to explain that to a telepath; because telepaths can't see any difficulty in weeding out the non-trustworthy. Now—"
"You still haven't faced the facts."