A month passed.
The delay was partly due to the slowness with which I had to work,
even after a plan had been laid. I could only do a little at a time,
and the times had to be well separated. Each day brought the moment of
onslaught closer, but I dared not hurry myself. If they caught me at my
work, there would be an end of all things.
But I cannot swear that my own mind did not prompt me to an unnatural
slowness and caution. I was only human, and every day was one more
memory.
They had all been very good to us; our friends had a party to celebrate
our engagement and we were universally congratulated and all the rest
of it. Yes, Kane was there too, shaking my hand and wishing me all the
luck in the world. Afterward he went back to his work and his pilot's
practice with a strange fierceness.
If at times I fell into glum abstraction, well, I had always been a
little moody and Barbara could tease me out of it. Most of the times I
was with her, I didn't think about the future at all.
There had been a certain deep inward coldness to her. She had carried
the old wound of her losses with bitter dignity. But as the days went
on, I saw less and less of it. She would even admit that individual
Valgolians might be fine fellows and that the Empire had done a few
constructive things for Earth. But it was more than a change of
attitude. She was thawing after a long winter, she laughed more, she
was wholly human now.
_Human_--
We sat one evening, she and I, in one of the big lounges the base had
for its personnel. There were only one or two muted lights in the long
quiet room, a breathing of music, snatches of whispering like our own.
She sat close against me, and my lips kept straying down to brush her
hair and her cheek.
"When we're married--" she said dreamily. Then all at once: "Con, what
are we waiting for?"
* * * * *