a slave of love through long months and years of amorous dalliance.

He wanted to hold her tightly and never let her go. There were lovers who remained entwined the whole night through and he wanted to be such a lover now, but a single night would never suffice and he wanted it to be a hundred nights, a thousand.

Earthmen were too quick in their lovemaking, headstrong and foolish. They thought of love as a kind of explosion, which quickly burned itself out and left only ashes. He knew better. He was far wiser and now that wisdom and knowledge was a living flame consuming him. Not a flame that could be extinguished in one soaring burst of ecstacy or a hundred such bursts but a flame that would burn forever.

First her mouth. Claim and possess it, parted lips over parted lips with the dartings of love between. Yes, her moist and yielding lips. She would bend to him and he would kiss her with such ardor....

But it was not as he had expected. As his arms moved to envelop her more completely and his lips approached her mouth she shuddered convulsively and strained backwards, crying out in wild terror.

It was not the cry alone which unnerved him. He could see her eyes now. They were very close and he could look directly into them. They were no longer glazed and uncomprehending. They were trained on his face with a blazing intensity of hatred and loathing.

It was horrible. It shamed him. He himself began to tremble and turn pale. Not only had his ardor failed to arouse her, it had stirred her to the kind of response that he most dreaded—anger, contempt, revulsion. She was no longer even frightened. He could see that she despised him too much to be afraid of him. He revolted her, sickened her. But strongest of all was the hatred—a blazing hatred such as he had never before seen in the eyes of a woman.

It was not even a womanly hate. It was the kind of hate that could crush and destroy. She was clubbing him with it, using it as a gladiator would use a mace—a mace encircled with cruel, blood-drawing spikes.

He had no defense against such contempt, such hatred. It unmanned him, so that he cowered back from her as if she had turned suddenly into a savage beast with bared fangs, slowly pacing about in front of him, and waiting for his knees to give way before closing in for the kill.

The words she flung at him were the worst of all. He had 

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