'Good morning, Mr. Walden. How are you feeling?'
Bill's wildly oscillating tensions froze at the point where he
could only move helplessly with events and suffer a constant,
unchangeable longing.
It was as if in a dream that they moved in silence together
down the long corridors of the hospital and took the lift to
an upper floor. The medicop opened the door to a room and
let Bill enter. Bill heard the door close behind him.
Clara did not turn from where she stood looking out the
window. Bill did not care that the walls of the chill little
room were almost certainly recording every sight and sound.
All his hunger was focused on the back of the girl at the
window. The room seemed to ring with his racing blood.
But he was slowly aware that something was wrong, and
when at last he called her name, his voice broke.
Still without turning, she said in a strained monotone, 'I
want you to understand that I have consented to this meeting
only because Major Grey has assured me it was necessary.'
--i t was a long time before he could speak. 'Clara, I need
you.'
She spun on him. 'Have you no shame? You are married
to my hyperalterdon't you understand that?' Her face was
suddenly wet with tears and the intensity of her shame flamed
at him from her cheeks. 'How can Conrad ever forgive me
for being with his hyperalter and talking about him? Oh,
how can I have been so
'They have done something to you,' he said, shaking with
tension.
Her chin raised at this. She was defiant, he saw, though
not towards himselfhe no longer existed for herbut to-
wards that part of herself which once had needed him and
now no longer existed. 'They have cured me,' she declared.
'They have cured me of everything but my shame, and
they will help me get rid of that as soon as you leave this
room.'
Bill stared at her before leaving. Out in the corridor, the
young medicop did not look him in the face. They went
back to Bill's room and the ofBcer left without a word. Bill
lay down on his cot.
Presently Major Grey entered the room. He came over to
the cot. 'I'm sorry it had to be this way. Bill.'
Bill's words came tonelessly from his dry throat. 'Was it
necessary to be cruel?'
'It was necessary to test the result of her psycho-surgery.
Also, it will help her over her shame. She might other-
wise have retained a seed of fear that she still loved you.'
Bill did not feel anything any more. Staring at the ceiling,
he knew there was no place left for him in this world and
no one in it who needed him. The only person who had really
needed him had been Mary, and he could not bear to think
