Perhaps he would have acted as he did even if he hadn't been sobering-up, but there is a certain kind of remorse contained in the sobering-up process that makes the sufferer more than normally susceptible to symbols of the higher planes of civilization. In Isolde, Parkhurst saw the strength he needed at the moment, and the raison d'etre he would need later on to straighten out permanently. Before he even heard her voice raised in resounding recitative, as he did shortly when one of the good fellows present, goosed her, he knew he had to have her.

He didn't have enough capital to buy her, but he did have enough to abscond with her to Procyon 16 where a boom was in progress and where you could practically name your job. As Vanderzee kept Isolde quartered in the shed with his milch bront, abduction proved to be no problem, and Parkhurst managed to smuggle her on board a Procyon-bound tramp ship without any trouble.

On Procyon 16, however, misfortune awaited him: the ulwano herds which the good colonists had been systematically slaughtering for years in order that wealthy women all over the civilized sector of the galaxy might know the secure feeling that accompanies owning an ulwano coat or stole, and in order that the good colonists themselves might know the secure feeling that accompanies owning acres of real estate and scads of stock in interstellar banks, had perversely migrated into the inaccessible northern barrens, thereby precipitating a depression. Jobs were not merely scarce: they were non-existent. Even worse, Parkhurst didn't have enough money to buy passage back.

In common with most men of his kind, he could meet a crisis in one way, and in one way only. He had not taken a drink since Sirius 21, but as soon as the seriousness of his predicament got through to him, he headed straight for the Star and Traveler—a thriving little establishment convenient to the spaceport, dedicated to the enhancement of human relationships via the congenial consumption of cut-rate gin. The money he had left lasted him two days. His watch got him through two more. His extra clothing was going for three more. By that time, his physical thirst was sated; his emotional thirst, however, was merely stimulated. He had only one item left to sell, besides the clothes on his back, and so he sold Isolde—for one tenth of what she was worth, and without ever having heard her sing the aria which he loved above all others and which she had been created for most: the Liebestod. Three days later, when he had sobered sufficiently to realize what he had done, he hanged himself.

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