Orbital inspiral of an originally 1.33 M_☉ NS through the envelope of its 12 M_☉, 500 R_☉ companion. The left panels show evolution of the orbital separation (top), and energies (bottom). The right-hand panels show the mass accretion of the NS in terms of the separation. Blue lines show the results assuming HLA, while yellow lines take into account the effect of asymmetry on the accretion rate. In HLA, the NS grows well beyond the maximum NS mass, acquiring more than a solar mass during its inspiral. However, the loss of symmetry in the accretion flow limits , such that the NS gains less than 0.1 M_☉ and survives the CE.