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"Good night," I said.

He went out, the knife of light from the corridor briefly cutting across the carpeting of my sitting room and vanishing again as the door opened, then latched behind him

I stayed where I was in the sitting room chair, enjoying the gentle night breeze through the propped-open door. I may have dozed. At any rate I came to, suddenly, to the sound of voices from the balcony. Not from my portion of the balcony, but from the portion next to it, beyond my bedroom window to the left.

"... yes," a voice was saying. Ian had been in my mind; and for a second I thought I was hearing Ian speak But it was Kensie. The voices were identical; only, there was a difference in attitude that distinguished them.

"I don't know..." it was Amanda's voice answering, a troubled voice.

"Time goes by quickly," Kensie said. "Look at us. It was just yesterday we were in school together."

"I know," she said, "you're talking about it being time to settle down But maybe I never will."

"How sure are you of that?"

"Not sure, of course." Her voice changed as if she had moved some little distance from him. I had an unexpected mental image of him standing back by the door in a window wall through which they had just come out together; and one of her, having just turned and walked to the balcony railing, where she now stood with her back to him, looking out at the night and the starlit plain.

"Then you could take the idea of settling down under consideration."

"No," she said. "I know I don't want to do that."

Her voice changed again, as if she had turned and come back to him. "Maybe I'm ghost-ridden, Kensie. Maybe it's the old spirit of the first Amanda that's ruling out the ordinary things for me."

"She married - three times."

"But her husbands weren't important to her, that way. Oh, I know she loved them. I've read her letters and what her children wrote down about her after they were adults themselves. But she really belonged to everyone, not just to her husbands and children. Don't you understand? I think that's the way it's going to have to be for me, too."

He said nothing. After a long moment she spoke again, and her voice was lowered, and drastically altered.

"Kensie! Is it that important?"

His voice was lightly humorous, but the words came a fraction more slowly than they had before.

"It seems to be."

"But it's something we both just fell into, as children. It was just an assumption on both our parts. Since then, we've grown up. You've changed. I've changed."

"Yes."

"You don't need me. Kensie, you don't need me - " her voice was soft. "Everybody loves you."

"Could I trade?" The humorous tone persisted. "Everybody for you?"

"Kensie, don't!"

"You ask a lot," he said; and now the humor was gone, but there was still nothing in the way he spoke that reproached her. "I'd probably find it easier to stop breathing."

There was another silence.

"Why can't you see? I don't have any other choice," she said. "I don't have any more choice than you do. We're both what we are, and stuck with what we are."

"Yes," he said.

The silence this time lasted a long time. But they did not move, either of them. By this time my ear was sensitized to sounds as light as the breathing of a sparrow. They had been standing a little apart, and they stayed standing apart.

"Yes," he said again, finally - and this time it was a long, slow yes, a tired yes. "Life moves. And all of us move with it, whether we like it or not."

She moved to him, now. I heard her steps on the concrete floor of the balcony.

"You're exhausted," she said. "You and Ian both. Get some rest before tomorrow. Things'll look different in the daylight."

"That sometimes happens." The touch of humor was back, but there was effort behind it. "Not that I believe it for a moment, in this case."

They went back inside.

I sat where I was, wide awake. There had been no way for me to get up and get away from their conversation without letting them know I was there. Their hearing was at least as good as mine, and like me they had been trained to keep their senses always alert. But knowing all that did not help. I still had the ugly feeling that I had been intruding where I should not have been.

There was no point in moving now. I sat where I was, trying to talk sense to myself and get the ugly feeling under control. I was so concerned with my own feelings that for once I did not pay close attention to the sounds around me, and the first warning I had was a small noise in my own entrance to the balcony area; and I looked up to see the dark silhouette of a woman in the doorway.

"You heard," Amanda's voice said.

There was no point in denying it.

"Yes," I told her.

She stayed where she was, standing in the doorway.

"I happened to be sitting here when you came out on the balcony," I said. "There was no chance to shut the door or move away."

"It's all right," she came in. "No, don't turn on the light."

I dropped the hand I had lifted toward the control studs in the arm of my chair. With the illumination from the balcony behind her, she could see me better than I could see her. She sat down in the chair Michael had occupied a short while before.

"I told myself I'd step over and see if you were sleeping all right," she said. "Ian has a lot of work in mind for you tomorrow. But I think I was really hoping to find you awake."

Even through the darkness, the signals came loud and clear. My geas was at work again.

"I don't want to intrude," I said.

"If I reach out and haul you in by the scruff of the neck, are you intruding?" Her voice had the same sort of lightness overlying pain that I had heard in Kensie's. "I'm the one who's thinking of intruding - of intruding my problems on you."

"That's not necessarily an intrusion," I said.

"I hoped you'd feel that way," she said. It was strange to have her voice coming in such everyday tones from a silhouette of darkness. "I wouldn't bother you, but I need to have all my mind on what I'm doing here and personal matters have ended up getting in the way."

She paused.

"You don't really mind people spilling all over you, do you?" she said.

"No," I said.

"I thought so. I got the feeling you wouldn't. Do you think of Else much?"

"When other things aren't on my mind."

"I wish I'd known her."

"She was someone to know."

"Yes. Knowing someone else is what makes the difference. The trouble is, often we don't know. Or we don't know until too late." She paused. "I suppose you think, after what you heard just now, that I'm talking about Kensie?"

"Aren't you?"

"No. Kensie and Ian - the Graemes are so close to us Morgans that we might as well all be related. You don't usually fall in love with a relative - or you don't think you will, at least, when you're young. The kind of person you imagine falling in love with is someone strange and exciting - someone from fifty light years away."

"I don't know about that," I said. "Else was a neighbor and I think I grew up being in love with her."

"I'm sorry." Her silhouette shifted a little in the darkness. "I'm really just talking about myself. But I know what you mean. In sober moments, when I was younger, I more or less just assumed that some day I'd wind up with Kensie. You'd have to have something wrong with you not to want someone like him."

"And you've got something wrong with you?" I said.

"Yes," she said. "That's it. I grew up, that's the trouble."

"Everybody does."

"I don't mean I grew up, physically. I mean, I matured. We live a long time, we Morgans, and I sup pose we're slower growing up than most. But you know how it is with young anythings - young animals as well as young humans. Did you ever have a wild animal as a pet as a child?"