The matron smiled. "I think she will. Women are more understanding than
men, usually. More romantic, you might say."
Nine-tenths of the building was brightly lighted, one-tenth rather
dim. In the dim tenth were the post-intent rooms, the reconciliation
chambers.
Joe sat on a yellow love-seat in one of the empty reconciliation
chambers, leafing through, but not seeing, a copy of a fashion
magazine. Then there were steps in the hall, familiar steps, and he
smelled the perfume before she came in.
She stood timidly at the archway, but Joe was even more unsure and weak
in the legs and he had trouble with his breathing.
"Joe," Vera said.
"Vera," he answered.
It wasn't much, but it seemed to be what both had in mind.
"Was there something you wanted to tell me?" she asked. "Something
important?"
"It's important to me, Vera," he said humbly. "I hope it's just as
important to you."
She looked brightly at him.
"I find it very difficult to put into words," he stumbled. "The usual
expressions of this emotion are so hackneyed. I would like to find some
other way to say it."
"Say what?"
"That I love you."
She ran to him. The impact knocked the breath out of both of them, but
neither noticed.
"Isn't the old phrase good enough, silly?" she scolded and kissed him.
"I love you too, lover baby."
Behind them, at the key words, the sonic-signal closed the hidden doors
in the archway and they were alone in the reconciliation chamber.
Joe discovered that Sam Tullgren, Director of the Domestic Center, had
thought of everything to make reconciliations complete.