But he could never do that with Callista. She had learned, with what suffering he could never guess, to keep her emotions deeply guarded, hidden behind an impermeable barrier. He breached that wall at his peril. He might now and then persuade her briefly to lower it or draw it aside, but it would always be there and he could never risk destroying it without destroying Callista too. If she seemed hard and invulnerable on the surface, he sensed that behind this she was more vulnerable than he could ever know.

“I won’t blame her, sweetheart, but I wish she could have been more explicit with us, with both of us.”

That was fair enough, Callista thought, remembering — like a bad dream, like a nightmare! — how she had railed at Leonie in the overworld. Still she felt compelled to say, “Leonie didn’t know.”

Andrew wanted to shout, well, why in hell didn’t she? That’s her business, isn’t it? But he dared not criticize Leonie to her either. His voice was shaking. “What are we to do? Just go on like this, with you unwilling even to touch my hand?”

“Not unwilling,” she said, forcing the words past a lump in hre throat. “I cannot. I thought Damon had explained it to you.”

“And the best Damon could do only made it worse!”

“Not worse,” she said, her eyes blazing again. “He saved my life! Be fair, Andrew!”

Andrew muttered, his eyes lowered, “I’m tired of being fair.”

“I feel that you hate me when you talk like that!”

“Never, Callie,” he said, sobered. “I just feel so damnably helpless. What are we to do?”

She said, lowering her eyes and looking away from him, “I cannot think it is so hard for you. Ellemir—” But she stopped there, and Andrew, overcome with all the old tenderness, reached out for the deeper contact, wanting to reassure her, and himself, that it was still there, that it could endure through the separation. It occurred to him that because of their deep-rooted cultural differences, even telepathy was no guarantee against misunderstanding. But the closeness was there.

They must start from that. Understanding could come later.

He said gently, “You look tired, Callie. You mustn’t overdo on your first day out of bed. Let me take you upstairs.” And when they were alone in their room, he asked gently, “Are you reproaching me for Ellemir, Callista? I thought it was what you wanted.”

“It was,” she said, stammering. “It was only… only… it should make it easier for you to wait. Do we have to talk about it, Andrew?”

He said soberly, “I think we do. That night—” And again she knew just what he meant. For all four of them, for a long time, “that night” would have only one meaning. “Damon said something to me that stuck. All four of us telepaths, he said, and not one of us with enough sense to sit down and make sure we understood each other. Ellemir and I managed to talk about it,” he said, adding with a faint smile, “even though she had to get me half drunk before I could manage to break down and talk honestly to her.”

She said, not looking at him, “It has made it easier for you. Hasn’t it?”

He said quietly, “In a way. But it’s not worth it if it’s made you ashamed to look at me, Callista.”

“Not ashamed.” She managed to raise her eyes. “Not ashamed, no, it is only… I was taught to turn my thoughts elsewhere, so that I would not be… vulnerable. If you want to talk about it” — Evanda and Avarra forbid she should be less honest with him than Ellemir — “I will try. But I am not… not used to such talk or such thoughts and I may not… may not find words easily. If you will… will bear with that… then I will try.”

He saw that she was biting her lip, struggling to force her words through the barrier of her inarticulateness, and felt a deep pity. He considered sparing her this, but he knew that a barrier of silence was the only barrier they might never be able to cross. At all costs — looking at her flushed cheeks and trembling mouth, he knew the cost would be heavy — they must manage to keep a line of communication open.

“Damon said you must never be allowed to feel yourself alone, or think yourself abandoned. I can only wonder, does this hurt you? Or make you feel… abandoned?”

She said, twisting her slender fingers in her lap. “Only if you had truly… truly abandoned me. Stopped caring. Stopped loving me.”

He thought that it was such an intimate thing, it could not help but bring him closer to Ellemir, make even more distance between Callista and himself.

His barriers were down, and Callista, following the thought, flared up in outrage. “Do you want me only because you thought I would give you more pleasure in our bed than my sister?”

He turned a dull red. Well, he had wanted directness; he had it. “God forbid! I never thought of it that way at all. It’s only… if you think I am going to be wanting you any less, I would rather forget the whole thing. Do you really think that because I sleep with Ellemir I have stopped wanting you?”

“No more than I have stopped wanting you, Andrew. But… but now we are equal.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Now your need of me is like mine for you.” Her eyes were level and tearless, but he sensed that inside she was weeping. “A… a thing of the mind and heart, a grief like mine, but not a… a torment of the body. I wanted you to be content, because” — she wet her lips, struggling against inhibitions which had lasted for years — “that was so terrible to me, to feel your need, your hunger, your loneliness. And so I tried to… to share it and I… I nearly killed you.” The tears spilled over, but she did not cry, flicked the tears away angrily. “Do you understand? It is easier for me when I need not feel that in you, so I would do anything, risk anything to quiet it…”

The desolation in her face made him want to weep too. He ached to take her in his arms and comfort her, though he knew he could not risk anything but the lightest touch. Gently, almost respectfully, he lifted her slender hand to his lips and laid the lightest breath of a kiss on the fingertips. “You are so generous you put me to shame, Callista. But there is no woman in the world who can give me what I want from you. I am willing to… to share your suffering, my darling.”

This was such a strange thought that she stopped and looked at him in amazement. He meant that, she thought with a queer excitement. His world’s ways were different, she knew, but in their terms he was really trying to be unselfish. It was the first awareness she had ever had of his total alienness, and it came as a deep, wrenching shock. She had always seen only their similarities; now she was faced, shockingly, with their differences.

He was trying to say, she realized, that because he loved her, he was willing to suffer all that pain of deprivation… Perhaps he did not even know, that night, how much his need had tormented her, could still torment her.

She tightened her fingers on his hand, remembering in despair that for a little while she had known what it was to desire him, but now she could not even remember what it had been like. She spoke, trying to match his gentleness: “Andrew, my husband, my love, if you saw me bearing a heavy burden, would you weigh me down with your own burden as well? It will not lighten my suffering if I must endure yours too.”

Again the shock, strangeness, amazement, and Andrew realized, with sudden insight that in a telepathic culture, it meant something different, to share suffering.

She said, with a quick smile, “And don’t you realize that Damon and Ellemir are part of this too, and that they will also be miserable, if they have to share your misery?”

He was slowly making his way through that, like a labyrinth. It wasn’t easy. He had thought he had shed a great deal of his cultural prejudice. Now, like an onion, stripping off one layer seemed only to reveal a deeper layer, thick and impregnable.