“To us, Vanita,” he said, smiling, and raised a glass of sparkling sapphire-blue wine. “Blue as your eyes, and blue as my spirits would become if you ever leave me.”
The girl smiled, raising her own glass of Martian essence, the costliest drink in the System, but calculated to make one feel life could be everlasting.
“I’ll not leave you, Earmar—not as long as you continue to pay me such a thumping salary.”
“So that is the reason? I was egoist enough to think it was because of my looks.”
The girl drank without comment. Earmar Brown had justification for his remark, but Vanita did not consider it her place to say so. A man is worth the approval of any feminine eye, surely, when he stands seven feet in height and has the carriage of an emperor? Such a stature had Earmar Brown, from his Ma
