"Miss—!" he said, taking her arm. Again the brief look of fear on her features, then she smiled. It was a small, very tired smile. "You needn't thank me—" she began.
"I wasn't going to—" said Lloyd. Then, embarrassed, "I mean, of course I'd thank you, but that isn't why I came after you. I just realized—Have you missed any Votes this quarter? I'd hate to be the cause of your Readjustment...."
"There's no danger," she said softly, "of my getting in trouble for non-voting."
He suddenly remembered the words of the Speakster, and dropped the girl's hand as though it had burnt him. "You—You're the—"
"Please!" begged the girl, before his voice could rise in a warning shout to the crowd. "Don't give me away!"
"They'll get you anyhow," he said flatly, with a note of near-pity in his voice. "By rights, I should raise a cry right this instant, to save the Goons the trouble of checking all the good Kinsmen." A secondary thought hit him, and he took a very short step backward. "And you're diseased. The longer you remain in contact with the crowd, the more likely a spread of the contagion."
"I'm not!" she almost shouted, then clenched her jaws, and got control of herself. Bright moisture began to trickle from the corners of her eyes, and she dabbed angrily at the warm salty drops. "I was hurt, yes!" she said, suddenly pulling back the long sleeve of her bright green dress, for a brief moment. Lloyd saw the ragged, pink-edged cicatrix on the underside of her forearm, and winced. "It's healed," she said. "I didn't need the hospital, don't you see?"
Lloyd saw, and stood there, his mind fumbling dizzily for a direction to take. The last straggling ends of the crowd were moving into the arcades, now. Lloyd took his bearings, saw that only one or two people were now headed for his own arcade, and began to back off in that direction, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so terribly sorry. I must go, now."
She nodded, once, then turned her back on him, and stood, small and helpless, in the growing void that was the Temple proper. Lloyd turned from her and started toward his arcade. Then he stopped and looked back at her. She was healed, after all.... He remembered with a sense of shame the time he'd broken a finger, and hadn't reported for hospital assignment, because a favorite cowboy was at the neighborhood theatre that afternoon. He never had gone in, then, being fearful lest the examining doctors notice that he'd delayed. The finger had healed itself, a trifle crookedly, and Lloyd had never told anyone of his dereliction, not even his father. Especially not his father.