Her clear look made him ashamed and he added, "With us the dance is an art form only. Here the intent seems different."
"It is," Leila said almost grimly. "Finish your drink, Buster. You're going to need it."
He needed several before the evening was finished. The Terran dance in its limited variations offered small challenge; Yahn mastered it with an ease that delighted Leila and brought tacit envy from other couples. The cocktails may have contributed to his own mixed reactions, lending primitive tactility to Leila's pliant response.
Neither of them, when Ryerson of the Post went away with his camera, considered calling Ellis.
"I don't often enjoy my work so much," Leila said. "Let's not spoil the evening with diplomacy, shall we?"
They left the Diplomatic vehicle for Ellis, rented an agency car and drove through the charged serenity of the night into the mountains. They talked the Moon down and the Sun up. Nothing took place that might have shocked a reasonably tolerant duenna, but by dawn they had reached the sort of understanding that comes spontaneously or not at all.
"The biologists who tailored me to Terrestrial standards," Yahn said, "did their work too well. I find myself more Terran than Martian."
The immovable obstacle, of course, was Yahn's obligation to Yrml, who would be waiting with enduring Martian patience for his return. Leila went into that matter later with Ellis, not so much to enlist his dubious sympathies as to clarify the bristly problem in her own troubled mind.
"Martians use our broadcasts as a standard of judgment," Leila said. "And you know where that leads. The more prominent the people in the newscasts, the higher the divorce rate. The more popular a video serial, the greater its emotional shilly-shallying. To Martians we're the last word in fickleness."