They had all this time been approaching William, who was seated facing them at one end of the lounge and talking to a tall slim woman whose back was to them. As Galt and Donal came up, William’s gaze went past her.

“Well, Marshal!” he said, smiling. “Protector!” The woman turned around; and Donal found himself face to face with Anea.

If five years had made a difference in the outward form of Donal, they had made much more in that of Anea. She was in her early twenties now, and past the last stages of that delayed adolescence of hers. She had begun now to reveal that rare beauty that would deepen with age and experience and never completely leave her, even in extreme old age. She was more developed now, than the last time Donal had seen her, more fully woman-formed and more poised. Her green eyes met Donal’s indeterminate ones across mere centimeters of distance.

“Honored to see you again,” said Donal, inclining his head.

“The honor is mine.” Her voice, like the rest of her, had matured. Donal looked past her to William. “Prince!” he said.

William stood up and shook hands, both with Donal and with Galt.

“Honored to have you with us, Protector,” he said cheerfully to Donal. “I understand the marshal’s proposing you for delegate. You can count on me.”

“That’s good of you,” answered Donal.

“It’s good for me,” said William. “I like open minds around the Conference table and young minds—no offense, Hendrik—are generally Open minds.”

“I don’t pretend to be anything but a soldier,” growled Galt.

“And it’s precisely that that makes you dangerous in negotiations,” replied William. “Politicians and businessmen always feel more at home with someone who they know doesn’t mean what he says. Honest men always have been a curse laid upon the sharpshooter.”

“A pity,” put in Anea, “that there aren’t enough honest men, then, to curse them all.” She was looking at Donal.

William laughed.

“The Select of Kultis could hardly be anything else but savage upon us underhanded characters, could you, Anea?” he said.

“You can ship me back to the Exotics, any time I wear too heavily on you,” she retorted.

“No, no.” William wagged his head, humorously. “Being the sort of man I am, I survive only by surrounding myself with good people like yourself. I’m enmeshed in the world of hard reality—it’s my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way —but for vacation, for a spiritual rest, I like to glance occasionally over the wall of a cloister to where the greatest tragedy is a blighted rose.”

“One should not underestimate roses,” said Donal. “Men have died over a difference in their color.”