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stopped. A dead weight of dismay plumped into his stomach; his whole being
sagged. "You mean-" he said.
"I mean," replied Castler with a triumphant leer, "that the boys aren't letting a
beauty like her be lonesome. And, naturally, your son was the first to speak to
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her." He finished: "They're walkin' together now on Second Avenue, comin' this
way."
"Get out of here!" Fara roared. "And stay away from me with your gloating. Get
out!"
The man hadn't expected such an ignominious ending. He flushed scarlet, then
went out, slamming the door. Fara stood for a moment, stiffly. Then, with jerky
movements he shut off his power and went out into the street. The time to put a
stop to that kind of thing was-now!
He had no clear plan, simply a determination to end an impossible situation. It
was all mixed up with his anger against Cayle. How could he have had such a
worthless son, he who paid his debts and worked hard, and tried to be decent and
live up to the highest standards of the empress?
He wondered if there mightn't be bad blood on Creel's side, not from her mother,
of course-Fara added the qualification hastily. There was a fine, hard-working
woman, who would leave Creel a tidy sum one of these days. But Creel's father
had disappeared when she was a child.
And now, Cayle with this weapon shop girl, who had let herself be picked up-he
saw them as he turned the corner onto Second Avenue. They were heading away
from Fara. As he came up, the girl was saying:
"You have the wrong idea about us. A person like you can't get a job in our
organization. You belong in the Imperial service, where they can use young men
of good appearance and ambition."
Fara was too intent for her words to mean anything. He said harshly, "Cayle!"
The couple turned, Cayle with the measured unhurried-ness of a young man who
had gone a long way on the road to acquiring steel-like nerves; the girl was
quicker, but dignified.
Fara had a feeling that his anger was self-destroying, but the violence of his
emotions ended that thought even as it came. He said thickly, "Cayle, get home at
once."
He was aware of the girl looking at him curiously from strange, gray-green eyes.
No shame, he thought, and his rage mounted, driving away the alarm that came
at the sight of the flush that was creeping into Cayle's cheeks.
The flush faded into a pale, tight-lipped anger as Cayle half-turned to the girl and
said, "This is the childish old fool I've got to contend with. Fortunately, we
seldom see each other. We don't even eat our meals at the same table. What do
you think of him?"
The girl smiled impersonally. "Oh, we know Fara Clark. He's the mainstay of the
empress in Glay."
"Yes," the boy sneered. "You ought to hear him. He thinks we're living in heaven,
and the empress is the divine power. The worst part of it is that there's no chance
of his ever getting that stuffy look wiped off his face."
They walked off; and Fara stood there. The extent of what had happened drained
anger from him as if it had never been. There was the realization that he had
made a mistake. But he couldn't quite grasp it. For long now, since Cayle had
refused to work in his shop, he had felt this building up to a climax. Suddenly, his
own uncontrollable ferocity stood revealed as a partial product of that deeper
problem. Only, now that the smash was here, he didn't want to face it.
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All. through the day in his shop, he kept pushing it out of his mind, kept thinking:
Would this go on now, as before, Cayle and he living in the same house, not even
looking at each other when they met, going to bed at different times, getting up,
Fara at 6:30, Cayle at noon? Would that go on through all the days and years to
come?
Creel was waiting for him when he arrived home. She said: "Fara, he wants you to
loan him five hundred credits, so that he can go to Imperial City."
Fara nodded wordlessly. He brought the money back to the house the next
morning, and gave it to Creel, who took it into Cayle's bedroom.
She came out a minute later. "He says to tell you goodbye."
When Fara came home that evening Cayle was gone. He wondered whether he
ought to feel relieved. But the only sensation that finally came was a conviction of
disaster.
CHAPTER IV
HE HAD been caught in a trap. Now he was escaping.
Cayle did not think of his departure from the village of Glay as the result of a
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