“That was loyalty to me, yes, and loyalty to yourself,” Dick explained. “You were mine until I ceased being the greatest man in the world. He then became the greatest man in the world.”

She shook her head.

“Let me try to solve it for you,” he continued. “You don’t know your mind, your desire. You can’t decide between us because you equally want us both?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Only, rather, differently want you both.”

“Then the thing is settled,” he concluded shortly.

“What do you mean?”

“This, Paula. I lose. Graham is the winner. Don’t you see. Here am I, even with him, even and no more, while my advantage over him is our dozen years together —