"There are plenty of other men--"

"They want you. There'll be no difficulty about terms."

Drene said with a shrug:

"Terms are coming to mean less and less to me, Guilder. It costs
very little for me to live." He turned his gray, tired face. "Look
at this barn of a place; and go in there and look at my bedroom. I
have no use for what are known as necessities."

"Still, terms are terms--"

"Oh, yes. A truck may run over me. Even at that, I've enough to
live life out as I am living it here--between these empty walls--and
that expanse of glass overhead. That's about all life holds for
me--a sheet of glass and four empty walls--and a fistfull of wet
clay."

"Are you a trifle morbid, Drene?"

"I'm not by any means; I merely prefer to live this way. I have
sufficient means to live otherwise if I wish. But this is enough of
the world to suit me, Guilder--and I can go to a noisy restaurant to
eat in when I'm so inclined--" He laughed a rather mirthless laugh
and glanced up, catching a peculiar expression in Guilder's eyes.

"You're thinking," said Drene coolly, "what a god I once set up on
the altar of domesticity. I used to talk a lot once, didn't I?--a