"Couldn't you have waited? You could have asked me what to do, you know. Men ask our girls to marry them every day; it isn't as if it was a new problem that we hadn't handled before."
"But he needed me, right then. I didn't think he could wait. I had to say I'd marry him, or he'd have been biting pieces out of his mattress."
"I know you did your best, Suzy. Those rules, well, they're not only for his protection, you know. What are you going to do when Whit Clayborne lands, and comes in here to claim his bride? Had you thought of that?"
"Honestly, Miss Graham, I didn't think of anything, except that he needed me at the time. But of course I'll let him go. I'd let him go even if the rules didn't say I had to."
Miss Graham's voice was unexpectedly gentle. "You want to get married, don't you? We could break a rule, just this once."
"Not like that, Miss Graham. Not like that. It wouldn't be fair to hold him to a promise that he made in space. Even if you'd let me do it, I wouldn't marry him. I couldn't live with myself. He doesn't know, well, about me. He wouldn't have loved me if I'd told him. He's never seen me; all he's in love with is a voice that understands how to keep him sane. I wouldn't hold him to that promise, Miss Graham, if he was the last chance to marry that I'd ever have."
Miss Graham was silent for a few moments, then turned to the door.
"You've figured out how to let him know that you won't marry him?"
"I'll tell him when he comes down."