"Hear me out before you leap to conclusions. You said that you loved my wife...."
Lyddy gave a moan. "You know he was only stringing me along to get back at you."
"He wouldn't have done that," said Mattern. "Not a fine, upstanding boy like Alard, no matter how much he hated me. You really love Lyddy, don't you, Alard—as you said before?"
The boy looked frightened. "Only in a manner of speaking," he said quickly. "I was trying to make you jealous. I think of her as a sister—a sister-in-law."
"She's very beautiful," Mattern reminded him. And the xhindi had done their work well. She hadn't changed; they had preserved her for him just as she had been sixteen years before. If only they had let her change, then things might have worked out. They could have kept the body from growing old without holding back the mind—or had they not held back the mind? Was this the fullest maturity it was capable of?
"A man who has her as his wife should be very happy," Mattern pointed out. "You wouldn't want her to go back to what she'd been doing, and she won't stay with me."
"Yes, sure." There was a desperate note in the boy's voice. "But she's not young. I mean for me—although, of course, she looks young," he added, with a wild glance in her direction. "And she's not very—she isn't—"
Mattern got up and put his hand on his brother's shoulder. "Then if you feel that way about her and do as I ask, it will really be a favor to me."
"Why should I do you a favor?" Alard demanded. His eyes darted back and forth like an animal that is beginning to realize it is caught in a trap.
"To prove you're the better man," Mattern told him. "To heap coals of fire on my head. To prove that if there's bad blood in the family, it exists only in me."