cannot paste it onto the outside of a hollow shell and make beauty come alive!"

"Julian—"

He blinked at her, as though startled and afraid. "What has happened with you? How many like you are there? No, I can't start believing such an incredible thing. I'd be lost. Get out! Get out!"

She touched his shoulder. "Goodbye," she said softly. "I know what loneliness is."

When he turned to her again there were tears in his eyes. He whispered, "I believe you do—you really do. But how could it be? How could you have inside of you what we humans are losing?"

She sat in the Commutor Jet, returning to Master Kelsey. She knew that looking like a beautiful woman was not quite enough. She had to know the right things to say. She felt that she did know all the correct retorts, quips, the polite gestures and nuances and intonations that made one innocuously acceptable. She had watched the Tevee for years as they explained how to win people and influence the right friends, and gain the maximum amount of response from the group, from love, from whoever was joining their smile with yours.

She had learned all the controversial things that must never be talked about, and all the popular immediate things that should be talked about incessantly. But she felt an intense need for rehearsal. This had to be successful. She had committed herself. She could not fail. Failure meant a return to the factory and the final fatal twist of the thermostat. It would not be murder, for they were ignorant of the existence of a robot's soul. And she didn't care about the risk. She would feel her love for Kelsey returned; she would feel his arms, his lips, his love. Let them, whoever they were, worry about the disappearance of a drab domestic named Alice.

Alice was dead. Alice had been reborn. Alice had come out of the lonely dark of unborn waste into the living light of love.

She carried on this imagined conversation with Kelsey, rehearsing. No, it was not enough to be filled to overflowing with love. You had to know how to act, you had to smile all the time, you had to say the right things and know when not to speak. Beauty is as beauty does.

"Well," the imaginary Kelsey said, smiling, "do you like Arnso's new hit recording, I'LL ALWAYS WANT YOU, as much as the one he recorded last week?"

"It's wonderful," she said, 

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