Valentine Michael Smith had grokked, when first he had known it fully, that physical human love - very human and very physical - was not simply a necessary quickening of eggs, nor was it mere ritual through which one grew closer; the act itself was a growing-closer, a very great goodness - and (so far as he knew) unknown even to the Old Ones of his former people.  He was still grokking it, trying at every opportunity to grok its fullness.  But he had long since broken through any fear that heresy lay in his suspicion that even the Old Ones did not know this ecstasy - he grokked already that these his new people held spiritual depths unique.  Happily he tried to sound them, with no inhibitions from his childhood to cause him guilt or reluctance of any sort.