somehow designed, in the middle of all that vast emptiness of dead sea, sand and eroded rock, to have a not-ungraceful look of insubstantiality, as though at any moment it might open great wings of some sort and take off into the Martian nowhere by which it was so overwhelmingly surrounded. The side that faced the lake curved in a half-moon, so that it commanded a wide prospect to the eroded hills that had once been mountains to the west and to the east thousands of unbroken miles of desert, that had once, they said, been an ocean.

When Madeleine opened her eyes, it was night. On many a starry night she had lain inside walls not so different from these, and felt much the same, she thought, surrounded by a desert of her own. Away off there in the blackness, Earth shone palely—and she might as well never have left it at all.

And then again she saw the old hermit's eyes out there in the dark, his burning eyes where there should be only sterile emptiness in the night. And his voice calling where there would otherwise have been only the dusty echoes of an arid past.

Outside now the tourists were gathering in the double moonlight. The weird extrapolation of Earth music that was supposed to be the strains of Martian rhythms drifted to her, and lights flickered from burning tapers where dancers undulated and writhed fitfully. A libidinous expectancy was as heavy as a thick scent in the night.

Then, only for a moment, she despised herself for not being with the others, for never having been able to participate in the futile make-believe. She felt like a child who had never grown beyond the stage of the most old-fashioned fairy tales. Someone who had gone beyond the looking-glass and had never been able to get back, but who had never quite been able to forget the world from which she had come.

She could hear her parents and Don talking in the next room.

"It's a shame for her to miss the ritual of the double moons," Don said.

"She's always been that way," Mr. Ericson said. "Staying by herself."

"We've tried everything," said Mrs. Ericson.

"She's spent half her life on an analyst's couch," said Mr. Ericson.

"She wouldn't even," Mrs. Ericson said, "fall in love with her analyst!"

"She was only in love once," said Mr. Ericson, "and that had to be with an idiot who was always writing sonnets."

"A poet," said Don. "There used to be a lot of poets."

"But not in my life," said Mr. Ericson.

"Maybe," Don said, "your daughter expected a little bit too much from Mars."

"Don," Mrs. Ericson pleaded, "maybe you can do something."

"I'll be glad to try," Don said.

So Madeleine lay there and waited for Don, the perfect host, who could supply everyone at Martian Haven with whatever was necessary to insure a pleasant day.

Later, though she did not turn or make any sign of noticing, she knew he had entered the room and was standing over her. She could see the periphery of his giant shadow projected by moonlight over the colored glass.

"Madeleine—we've got a date for the ritual tonight."

"That's odd, Don. I don't remember it."

"But you didn't say you wouldn't attend it with me, when I suggested it this morning."

"Well, Don, this is an official rejection of your proposal."

She saw his shadow bend, his body drop down beside the couch. She felt his hands on her arm. The peculiar fright went through her.

"You won't listen, Madeleine, but whatever you're looking for here—please forget it! The rituals will help you forget. Try it, Madeleine! Please—"

Why did he, all at once, sound so desperate?

"With you?"

"Why not?"

"You're just an artificial dream, Don, that comes true seasonally for people so sick that they can convince themselves you're real—for a price."

"Well, Madeleine—are you so different?"

"I guess I am."

"You just want the impossible. The others—they want little dreams we can give them easily."