against the blue June sky. A set of footprints slightly deeper than its predecessors indicated that Sabrina had paused by the trunk. Despite himself Blake paused there too. Pain tightened his throat when he looked at Deirdre's delicate profile and copper-colored hair, intensified when he lowered his eyes to the remembered blueness of her graduation dress. The diamond brooch that he had given her as a graduation present, and which she had proudly pinned upon her bodice for the whole wide world to see, made him want to cry. His self-image of two weeks ago shocked him. There were lines on the face that did not as yet exist, and the brown hair was shot with streaks of gray that had yet to come into being. Lord, he must have been feeling old to have pictured himself like that!

Deirdre was speaking. "Yes," she was saying, "at nine o'clock. And I should very much like for you to come."

Blake Past shook his head. "Proms aren't for parents. You know that as well as I do. That young man you were talking with a few minutes ago—he's the one who should take you. He'd give his right arm for the chance."

"I'll thank you not to imply that you're my father. One would think from the way you talk that you are centuries old!"

"I'm thirty-eight," Blake Past said, "and while I may not be your father, I'm certainly old enough to be. That young man—"

A pink flush of anger climbed into Deirdre Eldoria's girlish cheeks. "What right has he got to take me! Did he scrimp and go without in order to put me through high school and college? Has he booked passage for me to New Earth and paid my tuition to Trevor University?"

"Please," Blake Past said, desperation deepening his voice. "You're only making everything worse. After majoring in Trevorism, you certainly ought to realize by now that there was nothing noble about my buying you after Eldoria died. I only did it to ease my conscience—"

"What do you know about conscience?" Deirdre demanded. "Conscience is a much more complex mechanism than most laymen realize. Guilt feelings aren't reliable criteria. They can stem from false causes—from ridiculous things like a person's inability to accept himself for what he is." Abruptly she dropped the subject. "Don't you realize, Nate," she went on a little desperately, "that I'm leaving tomorrow and that we won't see each other again for years and years?"

"I'll come to New Earth to visit you," Blake said. "Venus is only a few days 

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