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.

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