"I took a job at the bank. For twenty years I've sat in a cage, counting out money and putting little legends in bank-books. I've felt myself drying up day by day, week by week, year by year. When I've sought love I've merely defiled myself. You taught me passion, Banning, then destroyed my capacity to enjoy it with anyone but you. You destroyed me and never even knew it."
"You could have gone out into the world," he said with a trace of contempt. "Other girls have."
"Other girls are not me," Eve replied steadily. "Other girls don't give themselves to a man as completely as I gave myself to you."
"What can I do now?" Coulter asked, running a hand through his newly crew-cut hair. Recalling Eve at dinner, seeing her in the doorway, holding her briefly in his arms—he had almost decided that in this new life she was the partner he would carry with him.
Now, however, he was afraid of her. It was Eve who had, in some strange way, brought him back twenty years for purposes she had yet to divulge. One thing he knew, logically and intuitively—he could never endure life with anyone of whom he was frightened.
She was no longer looking at the wall—she was looking directly at him and with curious intensity. She said, "Do you have to ask?"
She was testing him, of course. Sensitive, brilliant, she might be—yet she was a fool not to have judged the effect of his fear of her. He walked around the table, took hold of her shoulders, turned her to face him, said, "What has this particular evening to do with bringing me—us—back?"
"Everything!" she said, her eyes suddenly ablaze. "Everything, Banning! Can't you understand?"
He released her, lit himself a cigarette, seeking the calmness he knew he must have to keep his thinking clear. He said, "Perhaps I understand why—a little. But how, Eve, how?"
She got up and walked across the wide hearth, kicked a fallen log back into place. Its glowing red scales burst into yellow flame. She turned and said, "Remember my father's last work? His efforts to discover the secrets of Time?"