"Daren! Who?" she asked, quickly, her eyes darkening with thought.
"Captain Vane Thesel."
How singular to Lane the fact she did not laugh! She only stared. Then it seemed part of her warmth and glow, her subtle response to his emotion, slowly receded. He felt what he could not see.
"Oh! He. Vane Thesel," she said, without wonder or surprise or displeasure, or any expression Lane anticipated.
Her strange detachment stirred a hideous thought—could Thesel have been.... But Lane killed the culmination of that thought. Not, however, before dark, fiery jealousy touched him with fangs new to his endurance.
To drive it away, Lane launched into more narrative of the war. And as he talked he gradually forgot himself. It might be hateful to rake up the burning threads of memory for the curious and the soulless, but to tell Mel Iden it was a keen, strange delight. He watched the changes of her expression. He learned to bring out the horror, sadness, glory that abided in her heart. And at last he cut himself off abruptly: "But I must save something for another day."
That broke the spell.
"No, you must never come back."
He picked up his hat and his stick.
"Mel, would you shut the door in my face?"