sly near the breaking point.

"If you'll just calm down for a few moments," Victor tried, "I'm sure we
can talk this out sensibly enough."

"It won't work, Dr. Quink, it won't work. You're trying to talk it out
like I'm nuts, you're trying to reassure me, but it won't work because
you can't. Because I'm _not_ nuts! I'm telling the truth and she knows
it! Damn you, Mimi, tell him!"

* * * * *

"All right! All right, I'll tell him," she cried. "And I'll tell you,
too. And I'm not going back with you, you'll see. Because I planned this
from the start. My God, what a day," she sighed, and sat down on the
bed. "Now listen, both of you, you, too, Donald, because you don't know
it all either."

"He's not crazy, Victor, we do come from the future. I was reading about
all the Nobel prize winners, darling, and of course, I came across you,
and right from the beginning you fascinated me. Do you know you were the
first psychiatrist ever to win the award, and then you won it twice?
Oh, I can tell you, I was terribly impressed! And when I saw your
picture, you know the one, the portrait by Videl in the Museum of
Ancient--oh, but of course, it hasn't been done yet. You have gray
sideburns then, and there's not a touch of gray in your hair now.
Anyway, you look absolutely distinguished with gray, it's certainly your
color. And I thought you were just the handsomest Nobel winner I had
ever seen, and darling, you are, not the slightest doubt about it. Don't
you think so, Donald?"

"He's charming," Donald replied. "Just terribly, terribly charming.
Would you mind getting on with it?"

"Please," Victor started to interrupt.

"Don't be modest, darling," Mimi went on. "So then I read a biography,
and then another, and soon I was doing nothing but studying you. I fell
in love with you, dear, I fell in love with you a thousand years after
you were dead. You never married, you know, and you needed me, and I
guess that helped, but at any rate I fell, and I fell all the way.

"We're not married, Donald and I. There's no sex then, so there's no
need for marriage. Right, Donald? Right. But he was coming here on
vacation and he was nice enough to take me along, and we had to fit in,
so we came as husband and wife. Just a matter of convenience, really.
But then we were here for all those months, and I didn't get to meet
you, and something about this age just got into my bones, I loved it so,
people really _li