they examined him. A tiny smile curved her pale lips. "Did I hear correctly?"

"Yes, dear." He repeated the word deliberately, and for the first time since his student days he felt the web of his emotions tighten and twist into a knot of unreason.

She mustn't die ... not now!

Her smile widened with her look of mild amazement. "Why Webb, I do believe you mean it!"

"You have always been high in my affections, Anne."

"Yes, but—it's a long life. Such a long life!"

That damned phrase again! The essence of sanity, they called it. The cliche of cliches that under-scored this whole business of immortality. Be not concerned for the frustrations of the moment. All obstacles are transient—all obstacles and all emotions. The price of immortality is caution, patience, temperance. Deep personal attachments lead to love, love leads to jealousy, jealousy to un-saneness, insanity to violence, violence to—

All he had said was that she was high in his affections, but no one spoke of such things any more. When one did, it was considered that more than conventional promiscuity was involved in his intentions.

He turned away abruptly and studied the dials that registered her blood-pressure, pulse and metabolism. Incredible how even women three hundred years old remained sensitive to the slightest sign of infantile passion in their men. And more fantastic yet, that he, Webb Fellow, of the original generation of immortals some seven hundred years old, should find the destructive spark of possessiveness still alive in his semantically adjusted nervous system.

Mechanically he noted the systole and diastole lines on the revolving chart and ordered an attendant to administer whole blood. Before he left her he turned back for a moment. "It shouldn't be more than 24 hours, Anne, and I promise you there won't be any impairment of your maternal capacity."

He was startled to note that tears welled into her eyes. "Thank you, Webb. Clifford was worried that I might be disqualified."

"Nonsense! Clifford hasn't kept up on things." He strode away without further comment, but as he stepped from surgery into pathology he was troubled. Why was Clifford so worried about her? Did Clifford think that Anne would choose him to 

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