"Stephanie should see me now," Temple found himself saying and regretted it.
"Stephanie? Who's that?"
"A girl."
"Your girl?"
"What's the difference? She's a million light years and fifty centuries away."
"Answer me."
"Yes," said Temple, wishing he could change the subject. "My girl." He hadn't thought of Stephanie in a long time, perhaps because it was meaningless to think of someone dead fifty centuries. Now that the thoughts had been stirred within him, though, he found them poignantly pleasant.
"Your girl ... and you would marry her if you could?"
He had grown attached to Sophia, not in reality, but in the second of their dream worlds. He wished the memory of the dream had not lingered for it disturbed him. In it he had loved Sophia as much as he now loved Stephanie although the one was obtainable and the other was a five-thousand year pinch of dust. And how much of the dream lingered with him, in his head and his heart?
"Let's forget about it," Temple suggested.