"I have been very happy here with your people."
That made what he wanted to say extremely difficult. His throat suddenly congested, though he knew that it was only a nervous muscular reaction.
"Trajores," he said, gruffly, sadly, "I've been thinking of returning to my own planet, Earth. I have enough Roxite to insure a reasonable status of existence. I wish I might stay longer...."
Trajores stood immobile. She seemed to be thinking. Strangely enough a queer battle of emotions mirrored itself in her delicate features. Drawers felt vaguely uncomfortable alone with her. He wondered where Persum had wandered to. He had started out, as usual, with them, but somehow had drifted away, leaving him alone with Trajores.
"Michel Drawers," came an urgent thought.
Drawers riveted his attention upon the radiant woman.
"I wish you would stay here with me always. I know you would be very happy. I, I," two great golden tears rolled down her well-molded cheeks, and impulsively she flung herself into his big arms, and for the first time since his arrival he heard one of these little people give vent to a sound. It was a sob--and it came from Trajores.
Drawers stood puzzled. Instinctively he scratched his rough skull.
"Why, you fool," came a probing voice, "don't you realize she loves you!"
Persum was standing a few feet away, his features rigid in stern sincerity.
"Love, me? Me, Michel Drawers? Why, I am not handsome. I am ugly. I am not beautiful like your race. I am big and rough and hairy. How can she love a man like me? I could not even communicate by mental telepathy before I came here. I am just a man from another civilization, away because there was no place for me. How can she love me?"
There was mute appeal in Drawers' voice. He didn't know that he was crying like a child. He didn't know that he had unconsciously fallen to his knees. He didn't know anything except that Persum had said that this beautiful, adorable, heavenly little creature loved him. Him, Michel Drawers, a big, clumsy oaf, without even a proper knowledge of manners or psychology.
And as from the distance--clear as a bell--lovely as the strummings of a harpsichord it came to him.
"Michel Drawers, I love you for what you are. For your innate goodness of soul. For your humble deserving modesty. For your mighty strength. I love you for your bigness, for your naturalness and for something else--some indefinable spark that has made our lives as one, that has caused you to search me out across the inconceivable immensity of a thousand universes. That is all I know, and one other thing. I can never leave you. If you go, I go with you."