He stood there in the hall, awkwardly, waiting.
She came back. "Here."
The other Harry was a dimple-cheeked boy with blond hair and a small nose like his mother's. He was wearing a junior spaceman's suit and pointed a ray gun straight at you.
"Thank you."
"Sure you don't want anything to eat?" She wore a pleasant enough expression on her face, the same as she might use for a door to door solicitor or a visiting great-aunt from out of town.
"That's all right. I want to wish you good luck, Nancy."
"Thank you. Are you sure you don't want...." And then the pleasant look melted before tears, not slowly but all at once, so that this was a different person standing in the doorway and Harry Allerton wanted either to take her in his arms and comfort her or flee for the elevator but nothing in between. "Harry ... Harry ... I didn't know ... I couldn't ... we never...."
"That's all right," he said, settling for the in between and abruptly hating himself not for what was within him but for what was outside, for the world and its conventions and the things he had wanted to do but never could and the security he had wanted to earn but which now had eluded him.
"I'm sorry I carried on so," said Nancy, the conventional smile returning, the tears kleenex'd away.
"If there is something little Harry needs...?"