"Then fix me some coffee," Freya said. She removed her fur-lined jacket and laid it over a chair. "Or let me fix it for you." With sympathy she said, "You do look bad."

"Berkeley—why did I put the title deed up, anyhow? I don't even remember. Of all my holdings—it must have been a self-destructive impulse." He was silent, and then he said, "On the way here tonight I picked up an all-points from Ontario."

"I heard it," she said nodding.

"Does their pregnancy elate or depress you?"

"I don't know," Freya said somberly. "I'm glad for them. But—" She roamed about the apartment, her arms folded.

"It depresses me," Pete said. He put a tea kettle of water on the range in the kitchen.

"Thank you," the tea kettle—its Rushmore Effect—piped.

Freya said, "We could have a relationship outside of The Game, you realize. It has been done."

"It wouldn't be fair to Clem." He felt a camaraderie with Clem Gaines; it overcame his feelings—temporarily, anyhow —for her.

And in any case he was curious about his future wife; sooner or later he would roll a three.

II

PETE GARDEN was awakened the next morning by a sound so wonderfully impossible that he jumped from the bed and stood rigid, listening. He heard children. They were quarreling, somewhere outside the window of his San Rafael apartment.

It was a boy and a girl, and Pete thought, So there have been births in this county since I was last here. And of parents who are non-B, not Bindmen. Without property which would enable them to play The Game. He could hardly believe it, and he thought, I ought to deed the parents a small town... San Anselmo or Ross, even both. They deserve an opportunity to play. But maybe they don't want to.