It was in Prague that Dale met Ann Wondra, last daughter of a long line of Polish nobility. Ann was dark-haired, quick-eyed, and she could laugh in a way that warmed a man's blood. At any rate, she warmed Dale Stevenson's.

They went hunting together. They ate dinner together. They rode together. They visited Marillyn together, and after they came away from Marillyn in her wheelchair, Ann said, when he stopped the car on the top of a high hill in the moonlight from where they could see her ancestral castle, "You're determined that she shall get well, aren't you, Dale?"

"Of course," he said.

"What will you do if she doesn't?"

He refused to consider that. "She will," he said confidently.

By that time Dale's arms were tightly around her. So, for that matter, were Ann's around Dale.

"You are quite sure," Ann said cautiously.

"I suppose," he said, in an abrupt humbleness, "it's a fixation by now. It's something I recognize as a problem, and the best way to cure it is to cure Marillyn. When I go out on a party, or when I am extravagant, it nicks my conscience, because Marillyn made all these things possible for me in the first place."

"It isn't your fault that she's an invalid, is it?"

"Not directly, no, although she didn't want to take that trip. However, I don't think it's that as much as it is the feeling that if I get too much interested in other things I might neglect her—that is, I might be somewhere else doing something for fun just at the time when the opportunity would come to get her cured. Do you see what I mean?"

"I think so," she said gently.

"For instance," he went on, very much concerned with making her understand, "if I should spend a lot of money on other things—say, for instance, that I should marry you and we'd build a home and all—that would take a lot of money and it would make me unconsciously less eager to find a cure for Marillyn because deep down I'd know I might not be able to pay for it."

Ann drew back in her arms. Her black eyes reflected the starlight. "Dale, what did you say? Did you say 'if I should marry you'?"

He looked back at her. "Uh-huh."

"You've never even said you loved me."

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