unwanted
partner. Nanlo had been confident that after a year or two she would be
able to shake free of the bonds uniting her to Negu Mah and take flight
for herself into a world made vastly more pleasant by the marriage
settlement remaining to her.

But now she had been married, and had lived on Callisto, for a full
five years, and her tolerance of Negu Mah had long since turned to
bitter hate. Not because he was a bad husband, but because he was too
good a one!

* * * * *

There was an ironic humor in the situation, but Nanlo was not disposed
to recognize it. Lenient as the law was, yet it required some grounds
before it could free her. And she had no grounds whatever. Negu Mah was
at all times the model of courtesy and consideration toward her. He
granted every reasonable wish and some that were unreasonable--although
when he refused one of the latter, it was with a firmness as
unshakeable as a rock.

Their home was as fine as any on earth. She had more than adequate help
in taking care of it. She had ample time for any pursuits that
interested her. But she used it only to become more and more bitter
against Negu Mah because she could find no excuse to divorce him.

So great had her bitterness become that, if she could have gotten off
Callisto in any way, she would have deserted him. This would have meant
forfeiting her marriage settlement and the sum that was in escrow. It
would also have left her father in debt to Negu Mah for all that Negu
Mah had given him. But Nanlo's passionate rebellion had reached such a
state of ferment in her breast that she would have accepted all this to
strike a blow at the plump, smiling man who now sat drinking molkai in
their garden with their guest from Venus.

The answer to that was--Negu Mah would not let her leave Callisto. The
journey to earth, he logically argued, was still one containing a large
element of danger. There was no reason for her to visit any other
planet, and law and custom required that she look after their home
while he himself was away on business.

In this he was unshakeable. There was a stern and unyielding side to
him, inherited perhaps from his Eastern ancestors, that left Nanlo
shaken and frightened when it appeared. She had seen it the one time
she had seriously gone into a tantrum in an effort to make him let her
take a trip to earth. It had so startled and terrified her that she had
never used those tactic