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. I merely wanted to make my position
clear."
She turned back toward me.
"Merlin," she said then, "I think you lied to me."
I felt myself frowning as I tried to recall an occasion when I might
have misled her about something. I shook my head.
"If I did," I told her, "I don't remember."
"It was some years ago," she said, "when I asked you to try walking
your father's Pattern."
"Oh," I answered, feeling myself blush and wondering whether it was
apparent in this strange light.
"You took advantage of what I had told you-about the Pattern's
resistance," she continued. "You pretended it was preventing you from
setting your foot upon it. But there was no visible sign of the resistance,
such as there was when I tried stepping onto it."
She looked at me, as if for confirmation. "So?" I said.
"So," she replied, "it has become more important now than it was then,
and I have to know: Were you faking it that day?"
"Yes," I said.
"Why?" "Once I took one step upon it," I explained, "I'd have been
committed to walking it. Who knows where it might have led me and what
situation might have followed? I was near the end of my holiday and in a
hurry to get back to school: I didn't have time for what might have turned
into a lengthy expedition. Telling you there were difficulties seemed the
most graceful way of begging off
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