“You did frighten me when you touched me,” she said. “You came without a sound, and I was a thousand miles away, dreaming� “

“What?” Graham asked.

“Well, honestly, I had just got an idea for a gown — a dusty, musty, mulberry-wine velvet, with long, close lines, and heavy, tarnished gold borders and cords and things. And the only jewelery a ring — one enormous pigeon-blood ruby that Dick gave me years ago when we sailed the All Away.”

“Is there anything you don’t do?” he laughed.

She joined with him, and their mirth sounded strangely hollow in the pent and echoing dark.

“Who told you?” she next asked.