"But this is too much!"
With an abrupt movement the woman started up, to pause with face averted and hands fast laced. As promptly Lanyard tumbled out of the berth.
"Forgive me, Liane," he said contritely. "I daresay I am a bit light-headed, it would be surprising if I weren't, considering that I've experienced something of a shock today, and not by any means a physical shock merely—and am still shaken from it. You can hardly demand rational behaviour of a revenant lately spewed back into life by a psychic earthquake. That it was a strictly private earthquake doesn't make its after-effects any the less unsettling."
"True: it is you rather who have me to forgive." With a spontaneous generosity that shamed him, Liane swung back to Lanyard and caught both his hands to her bosom. "In my sadness and pain I forget you cannot understand . . ."
"Then make me understand. I've no one else to look to—and it would be unkindness to leave me in the dark."
"But give me time to consider . . ." She let go his hands and sank into the room's one chair. "It is going to hurt me to tell you, Michael, even more than it will hurt you."
"And how is that?"
"Because, I think" . . . She studied him a while with troubled gaze . . . "I think you have gone back to the ways of thought that were yours seven months ago."
"And what is so deplorable in that? Ways of thought about what?"
The woman leaned forward to bend her head to his in confidence, but gave a slight start instead and drew back with a veering glance, as if disturbed by some noise unheard by Lanyard, then laid a finger to her lips, sprang up lightly, and went to the port to look out. From this, in agreeable disappointment, she crossed back to the door, inclining to it an attentive ear for some seconds before opening it furtively to peer out, and concluding the performance with an expression of alarms allayed.