“Except for that first explosion, I was not in danger, Lord. They rushed me into a room deep beneath the Embassy.”

So she did not see my performance, he thought. I can be thankful for that.

“I sent for you to ask your forgiveness,” he said.

She sank on to a golden cushion. “What is there to forgive, Lord? You are not the reason for…”

“I am being tested, Hwi.”

“You?”

“There are those who wish to know the depths of my concern for the safety of Hwi Noree.”

She pointed upward. “That… was because of me?”

“Because of us.”

“Oh. But who…”

“You have agreed to wed me, Hwi, and I…” He raised a hand to silence her as she started to speak. “Anteac has told us what you revealed to her, but this did not originate with Anteac.”

“Then who is…”

“The who is not important. It is important that you reconsider. I must give you this opportunity to change your mind.”

She lowered her gaze.

How sweet her features are, he thought.

It was possible for him to create only in his imagination an entire human lifetime with Hwi. Enough examples lay in the welter of his memories upon which to build a fantasy of wedded life. It gathered nuances in his fancy—small details of mutual experience, a touch, a kiss, all of the sweet sharings upon which arose something of painful beauty. He ached with it, a pain far deeper than the physical reminders of his violence at the Embassy.

Hwi lifted her chin and looked into his eyes. He saw there a compassionate longing to help him.

“But how else may I serve you, Lord?”

He reminded himself that she was a primate, while he no longer was fully primate. The differences grew deeper by the minute.

The ache remained within him.

Hwi was an inescapable reality, something so basic that no word could ever fully express it. The ache within him was almost more than he could bear.

“I love you, Hwi. I love you as a man loves a woman… but it cannot be. That will never be.”

Tears flowed from her eyes. “Should I leave? Should I return to Ix?”

“They would only hurt you trying to find out what went wrong with their plan.”

She has seen my pain, he thought. She knows the futility and frustration. What will she do? She will not lie. She will not say she returns my love as a woman to a man. She recognizes the futility. And she knows her own feelings for me—compassion, awe, a questioning which ignores fear.

“Then I will stay,” she said. “We will take such pleasure as we can from being together. I think it is best that we do this. If it means we should wed, so be it.”

“Then I must share knowledge with you which I have shared with no other person,” he said. “It will give you a power over me which…”

“Do not do this, Lord! What if someone forced me to…”