"I ignore it, mostly. But there are times when it creeps up and gets me. I wake at night, thinking deeply. I fret, and go sleepless, wishing there were a way out."
"I think you've well made up for it."
"No," she said with a shake of his head. "He must feel denied of his right to honor by his affiliation—made in the face of public objection to mixed-marriage. I ... am now worse. An enemy alien."
"You are a Terran citizen," stated Grant.
"I have papers to prove it," she said scornfully. "And any doctor that didn't see the papers but examined me perfunctorily would pronounce me Martian. Ours will always be—a sterile marriage. It cannot be otherwise. Yet until this shadow came, we were both happy."
"Poor Jenna," said Grant, putting her head down on his shoulder and patting the back of it. "And now that the first doubt has crept in, the rest of Pandora's Troubles all come roaring in through the initial breach."
"And now this," she sobbed. "Grant, it's worse than torture."
Grant's mind whipped back and forth between several types of torture he'd heard about and wondered what she meant.
"No amount of torture could pry a secret from you, could it?" she asked.