she cried. "Listen to me. Don't be a fool. I know you feel as I do. You have followed and disrobed with your eyes every woman who passed you on the strip, and some of them were quite ugly, if you would like me to be completely honest about it. Perhaps you resent candor in a woman and prefer the lying sort. I don't particularly care, because I know that I am so desirable in your sight that you would like to take me into your arms and tell me how beautiful I am. To whisper it tenderly while you unloosen my gown and—"

"No! It would be a dark and terrible crime!" Hammers had started pounding in Teleman's temples and he could scarcely breathe.

"You fool, you fool!" she went on quickly, unbuckling the golden belt at her waist and throwing back her head. Her shimmering dark hair was a miracle of loveliness, the sunlight bright upon it. She stood very straight, her knees together, her full red lips slightly parted, morning-dew moist.

"Some of the women who passed were not beautiful at all. But others were radiant and when you stared at them your eyes lit up. In your eyes desire was a high-leaping flame. You were powerless to quench its bright splendor. You were tormented and afraid. But you did not really want the fire to dwindle and expire. I was watching you closely. I could not have been mistaken. There are some things no woman can be deceived about."

She moved close to him again. She caught his right earlobe between her lips, nibbled at it, whispered passionately into the chambered recess, "Fire! In your veins and in mine! In every breath we draw and when we breathe as one."

"No!" he cried, in desperate protest.

"Look at me," she pleaded. "Am I not beautiful? Make love to me now. Do not be afraid. There are no other pedestrians close to us at the moment. If they see us at all we will in nowise astonish them. The sex-privileged often embrace quickly and furtively on their way to the mating center, when distance turns them into small, barely distinguishable figures black against the sunrise. Everyone expects it of them, since they are naturally on fire with impatience."

"I have never seen—"

"At close range, no. But surely you have seen men and women acting strangely at a great distance, bobbing like tiny sails in a breeze when fortune favors them, and gives them as wide an expanse of empty travel strip to rejoice in as we now have at our disposal."

"There are at least five 

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