THE STRANGE WOMEN

By

Miriam Gardner

The Strange Women By Miriam Gardner

First published in 1962.

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Cover painting by Tom Miller.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CHAPTER 1

Nora Caine had seen only three patients this afternoon. Now again the waiting room was empty; there would still be time to drive to Albany and see Kit, before the night and the gathering snowstorm closed down over the twenty miles of country roads that lay between.

Kit, her husband, had been six months in the Veteran's hospital there, and would be there for six months more.

Kit would never have re-entered the hospital if she had not urged him—if she had not married him first, and spent a wild and insanely happy and heartbreaking honeymoon week with him. Kit was tired of hospitals; he resented every minute in the prison of bed and wheelchair. After the plane crash from which he had been dragged with crushed legs, he had fiercely refused to admit that he was disabled.

It made Nora dizzy and a little light-headed to think of Kit—the tanned face, the lean body so firm and healthy-looking that you expected him, any minute, to pull himself out of the wheelchair and clasp you in those muscular arms that seemed made for holding a woman close. He had blue eyes, narrowed from looking into the lights and far horizons of a jet flyer, but he was dark, with the fierce keen look of some caged falcon, restless and quick.

"What the hell—I should spend a year of my life in casts again? I'm doing fine!" he had flared in savage rebellion.

But in the end he had gone; he had done it for her. "I won't have people saying you've tied yourself down to a—a damn cripple," he said, his fists clenched and his voice shaking, and he had gone.

Nora shook her head hard. The longing for Kit was a continuous hunger, but dreaming about his arms was a luxury she couldn't afford during working hours. If there weren't any patients, there was the problem that had come with the morning mail.

The letter had been forwarded from her last hospital. Nora glanced through it, though she already knew it by heart.

Dear Nora;

Dad's old lawyers finally tracked you down. Why did we lose touch, anyhow? A stepbrother may not be much of a relative, but that's no reason for dropping right out of sight...

But I didn't, Nora thought, with the old touchy defensiveness. You did. My letters kept coming back from all those funny parts of the world. The Sorbonne. Cambodia. Tehuatlapan. Yucatan.

…I've been staying in the old house at Mayfield; I didn't think you'd mind...

So that's why there were lights there. And I only thought the agent had finally managed to rent it.

…and I'm wondering now, Nora, if you'd sell me your equity in the place. Since you've married again, I don't suppose you want it. I hate doing business by letter; please let me know where I can get in touch with you personally.

* * *

And the blunt, firm-stroked signature; Mack. He had penciled a telephone number after it; Nora went out into the hall, picked up the phone, and dialed. She listened, frowning.

"Oh, I see," she said at last. "Ask Mr. MacLellan to call me when he gets in." She hung up and was immediately furious with herself.

Damn, now I'll have to wait for the call, and I could have gotten away. And Kit's waiting.

An ancient framed pier-glass hung in the hall; Nora saw herself there, a tall woman, big-boned but slender, who would have been pretty if she had taken the trouble. At the moment she wore no makeup, not even lipstick, and her thick braids, wrapped close to her head, looked at least two shades darker than the bright copper they really were.

Because of the drafty old farmhouse, she had worn wool slacks under her white coat; she looked severe and rather forbidding. She scowled at her reflection, thinking of the years since she had seen Mack and what they had done to her; then, pushing the thought away, she opened the door to the waiting room.

The old parlor, gray in the December twilight, looked empty; then something moved in the dusk, and Nora, snapping on the light, saw a woman there.

A girl, really, so slender and young she might have been still in her teens. She jumped up, with a nervous smile, as the light flooded the room.

Nora said, "You can come in now, please," and held the heavy door for the girl to precede her into the office.

She was wearing a dark red coat like a schoolgirl's, and a childish knitted cap; but her legs, in fine stockings and high-heeled pumps, were too trim for a schoolgirl's. She unbuttoned her coat and laid it across the back of an old oak chair. She was small, with curly dark hair and widely spaced dark eyes, and she was wearing a red cashmere sweater, brightened up with a modest little jeweled pin that had cost about as much as Nora's entire winter wardrobe.

"Where's the doctor?" she asked, and Nora smiled.

"I'm the doctor."

"But—I mean—where is Dr. Byrd? The old doctor?"

"Flat on his back, and in an oxygen tent, I believe," said Nora serenely. "I'm Dr. Caine. Please sit down." She sat down herself and waited. After a minute the girl did, too; suspiciously, as if she still expected Dr. Byrd to pop out of a cabinet somewhere. Nora uncapped her pen.

"Your name, please?"

"Jill Bristol."

There was something oddly familiar about the name. About the girl, too, now that Nora came to think of it.

Well after all, I lived here once. If I put my mind to it, I'd probably recognize half the population.

"Are you a regular patient of Dr. Byrd's?"

"Not—since I was a little girl. I moved away years ago." Jill Bristol looked down at her shoes. Their polished pointed tips were still wet with snow. Then she said very quickly and all at once, "I want to know whether I'm pregnant."

Nora made a question mark on the desk pad. "Have you had other children?"

"Oh, no. I'm not—" she broke off. "No."

Something in the tone made Nora raise a mental eyebrow, but she asked neutrally, "When was your last period?"

"About—let me think—about five weeks ago."

Nora raised her real eyebrows this time. "You know, of course, Mrs. Bristol, that's a little too soon to be sure? I wouldn't like to give you a definite opinion until after the second missed period."

"But—but I've always been so perfectly regular before, and when it was late—this time especially,—I started to worry—"

Oh-oh, said Nora to herself. One of those.

Then, firmly, she told herself not to jump to conclusions. The girl might simply be a jittery new bride. In her own city practice, her next question would have been "How long have you been married"—if not a point-blank, "Are you married?" but two weeks of dealing with Byrd's small-town patients had made her less blunt and more careful.

"Even so, it's too soon to know. Why don't you go home and wait—oh, two or three weeks. Then, if your menstruation hasn't returned, Dr. Byrd should be back, and a diagnosis would be much more reliable."

And the old boy is welcome to give you the good news —or the bad!

Jill Bristol was regarding her with wide unhappy eyes—not dark as Nora had thought, but gray, rimmed in long, smoky lashes. "But I—I really do have to know, right away. Aren't there—tests?"

Nora's grim conviction grew. Young wives, happy or unhappy about the prospect of a baby, didn't look that desperate.

Ordinarily Nora would have said, "I haven't the facilities to make them here," referred her to a specialist, and let her walk out. Desperate pregnant girls were no novelty to any doctor. Sooner or later, though it hurt, you grew hardened to knowing you couldn't help more than one in a hundred; that however you advised, pleaded, admonished, they would go their own way. But something in this particular girl had touched her. She didn't quite know why; but she couldn't bear to think of this girl making the dreary rounds, trying old-wives remedies, ending in the shabby horror of some abortionist's butcher shop.

"Yes, of course, a rabbit test will diagnose pregnancy within a week after conception. You can leave a specimen for me, and I'll take it to the laboratory in Albany tonight. It will take a few days for it to be processed. Meanwhile, I can look you over and give you an opinion—if you'll bear in mind I might still be wrong."

"Please."

Nora got out a form and went through the routine questions; then took Jill into the examination room, and the girl sat on the edge of the cracked-leather table, unbuttoning her sweater.

"If you'll just unfasten your brassiere, please?"

The girl smiled for the first time, a small pixie grin. "I can't. I'm not wearing one."

Under the sweater was only a lacy slip, set with deep bands of embroidery. She slipped it down, exposing small breasts, very firm and taut, tipped with brown nipples like raisins. Nora touched the wide pink areolas and the girl winced.

"Tender? Is that something new? Say in the last week?" Sensitivity around the breasts was often the earliest sign of pregnancy.

"No, they've always been—ticklish." Jill giggled nervously. Nora said brusquely, "All right, you can button your sweater," and turned her back. The soft, secretive giggle, the suggestive intimacy of that word ticklish, flicked Nora on a raw nerve, and it was a moment before she could recapture the impersonal professional look.

She turned back to the laughing girl, still struggling with her slip straps, and Jill looked up suddenly and caught her eyes.

"Are you married, Dr. Caine?"

Nora looked at Kit's picture, smiling from the frame on her desk; then returned the girl's look steadily. "Yes, my dear, I am. Are you?"

"I—I will be. Oh, please," Jill's words tumbled over one another, "it isn't what you think, really it isn't. It's different—"

"They're all different," Nora said wearily, gesturing the girl to lie back on the table and guiding her heels into the stirrups. As her trained hands probed, Jill flinched, and Nora, mechanically reassuring her, broke off; "Hurt much?"

"Y—yes."

"All over. You can get dressed again." Nora discarded her rubber gloves. Jill had a narrow-hipped, slim body— a girl's body, hardly a woman's. Nora wrote pelvis slightly contracted with the surface of her mind. From her wince, Nora would offhand have written the girl down as a virgin—which she obviously isn't, Nora told herself wryly, but I'll bet she doesn't have much fun in bed. She pulled the thought up short—what was the matter with her this afternoon? Not since her intern year had she indulged herself in this sort of personal curiosity about a patient, even in her own thoughts.

"Well, my dear, it's quite possible you may be pregnant, but it's equally possible you may not." She explained the presumptive signs briefly, and why they might mean something else. "So we'll see what the bunny says. You—"

The telephone shrilled from the hall, making Jill jump. Nora said, "Excuse me a moment," mentally damning old Byrd's refusal to have an extension in the office.

"Doctor Leonora Caine speaking!" she rapped.

"Ouch!" said a resonant baritone, "you say that as if you were using a needle. Nora, this is Mack."

The unexpected depth and authority of the voice startled her. "Mack! I'm sorry, I'm nearly through for the day, and I thought it was another patient."

"I can't get over it, that you're here in Mayfield! How long have you been here? Why on earth haven't I run into you?"

"I've been here two weeks, but I don't go out much. Unless you needed a doctor, I don't suppose we would have run across each other at all, before I left."

"You're not living here, then?"

"Heaven forbid. Mack, I have a patient in the office. I'm sorry, but could you call back?"

"Why bother? If you're nearly through for the day anyhow, why not—wait, let me check with—" he broke off, adding after a minute, "Oh, well, it wouldn't make any difference to her. Could you have dinner with us at the hotel tonight?"

So there's a her in the picture? No, she didn't want to be sprung unexpectedly on her brother's—her stepbrother's wife. "I'm sorry," she said firmly, "I have to drive to Albany this evening."

"Drive? On a night like this? You're out of your mind," he said. "Whatever your engagement is, you'd much better break it and have dinner with me."

She frowned at the old masterful tone.

"I couldn't possibly."

"It couldn't be that important, could it?"

"It certainly could, and it is." But then Mack's firm, positive voice got through the layers of resistance. He was the only person who had ever been able to change her mind, or make her do anything she didn't want to. She sighed, flunking of the snowy highways, ice and chains. Kit would understand.

But Mack was already saying, "Well, if you can't, you can't. I forgot you weren't a kid for me to boss around. Tomorrow, then? Five o'clock?"

They agreed on it, and Nora went back into the office. Jill Bristol, finished dressing, sat nervously pleating her skirt. With a rude shifting of mental gears, Nora managed to get back to what she had been saying.

"You can come in Friday for your test report."

Jill rose, picking up her gloves. "Dr. Caine—"

"Yes?"

"I—nothing. What do I owe you?"

"I'll make out a bill next time." Nora felt safe and barricaded again behind routine she could control. She opened the door for Jill, noting with relief that the waiting room was still empty; picked up the girl's coat and held it.

"No overshoes?" She asked. “I’ll have you as an influenza patient yet."

Jill only gave her a shy, guilty smile. “I’ll see you Friday."

Nora went back into her borrowed office, lighting the cigarette she permitted herself only when office hours were over. Suddenly, with the vivid visual memory of fatigue, she remembered Jill Bristol and recognized her.

It had been fifteen years. And Jill had been just one of Pammy Bristol's little sisters.

That was the summer Mack had worked on a ranch in Oklahoma for college money. As if in the ripple of the faulty old pier-glass, Nora saw herself at seventeen, a leggy serious girl, shy and bookish. Pammy had been just fifteen. Nora couldn't even remember how they had met, or how their sudden friendship had flowered.

The Bristols had owned a huge old house at the edge of town, Pammy's father was a well-to-do Albany lawyer; her mother a leader in small-town church work and society. Nora's timid, reclusive father and stepmother had been quite outside their orbit; but Nora had often been invited to play tennis on their private courts—Pammy and her sisters in pretty tennis dresses that made Nora feel shabby and clumsy in her faded jeans. Every day after their game there was lemonade in the cool library, or upstairs in Pammy's chintz-flowered room.

Pammy was popular, spoilt, deliciously pretty, already rebelling against the girls' school she attended. Younger than Nora, she seemed already so much wiser in the ways of the world. Nora told herself Pammy was an empty-headed butterfly with nothing on her mind but dates; she would not confess to herself that she envied Pammy her boy friends, her poise, her popularity.

Her own goal chosen in childhood, Nora had gone after it so fiercely that there had been no time for fun, no time for boys—except Mack. And she shied away from the thought of Mack, and how they had lost each other.

It seemed that she and Pammy had talked all through the summer without stopping for breath; sprawled on Pammy's big bed, the sun making leaf-and-shade patterns on Pammy's upturned face. Tennis with Pammy, long bike rides on dusty white roads, swimming at the country club. It was tomboy Nora's first feminine friendship. It was also to be her last.

Not till the end of the summer did Nora grow troubled at her own pleasure in the younger girl's company. Pammy had taught her to dance, in the dark smooth-floored library; the lissome, boneless feel of Pammy's flexible waist between her hands was an almost painful delight.

Nora had little worldly wisdom, but she did have some vague idea that it was not quite right—the stirring she felt when she held Pammy, dancing… the ache of rage and fury when Pammy confided, giggling, how Jerry Marne had tried to touch her breasts.

Once, while they sprawled, chattering, on Pammy's bed, Pammy threw her arm over Nora and hugged her. Nora had pushed her away roughly. "Don't be silly," she said, but her arm was roughened with goose flesh.

Half a dozen times Pammy had begged Nora to come and spend the night. "We'd have such fun," she begged, "Mother lets me stay up 'most all night when I have company! Please, Nor!"

But Nora gently made an excuse, each time, and refused. The thought of sleeping with Pammy in that big bed was somehow too troubling to be considered. She knew perfectly well that girls did spend the night with each other without thinking twice; in her early teens she had been jealous of girls who could hug each other and kiss with spontaneous affection, but she had never been one of them. She had always been stand-offish, apart.

But of course the inevitable happened. They had been dressing after a swim, alone for once. Nora's jeans and Pammy's linen shorts were hanging from the same hook. Pammy turned, naked, gently bumping Nora's bare thigh. She stopped and stood very still, looking up at Nora with startled gray eyes.

Nora felt herself blushing. Her own flat boyish body seemed hardly to belong to the same sex as Pammy's; the curving hips, the small brown-tipped breasts, the hand-span waist. Nora was embarrassed at her nakedness, though she and Mack had often undressed for a casual swim, simply turning their backs on each other.

"You'd better get dressed, Pam."

"Oh, Nor, don't be prissy, we're both girls," Pammy said with a giggle. "You'd make a cute boy, though. Want to be my boy friend?"

"Pammy, don't—"

"Course, if you were a boy, I prob'ly wouldn't be standing here like this." Pammy was close to Nora, her damp tousled curls just touching Nora's bare shoulder. Suddenly Nora felt Pammy's arms pressing her close, Pammy's rounded breasts, rose-petal soft, brushing the spare slenderness of her own. Then Pammy swayed, crushing her body hard against Nora's.

"Kiss me, Nor," she begged in a whisper, "Please, please, kiss me—"

As if in a daze, Nora gathered Pammy up, lifting her from the floor. She was conscious of Pammy's silk skin touching her everywhere, as if her whole body were seared by it. Pammy's soft mouth, like a child's, stayed closed under her searching lips, but she wriggled her knee between Nora's thighs. They clung together for a long time, hungrily, dazed; then, signing, Nora felt the tense ache in her loins loosen and dissolve and she lowered Pammy gently to the floor. Pammy dropped her head to Nora's shoulder and held her, trembling.

Nora gave her a tender little spank. "Get dressed, you naughty girl," she whispered.

Dreamily they put on their clothes. Then Pammy pulled her back and stood on tiptoe, pressing her mouth to Nora's; Nora stood numb, shaking, her hands cupped around Pammy's breasts—so soft and warm through the thin blouse. Finally they pulled apart and Pammy, laughing nervously, fumbled in her beach bag for lipstick.

"Now you'll come and spend the night, won't you, Nor?" she teased. Nora couldn't remember what she answered; she only remembered the taste of Pammy's tangled hair under her lips. When they said goodbye Pammy had squeezed her hands and laughed. Her red mouth had never looked so merry.

She had never seen Pammy again. That night Nora's father had called her to the telephone. The voice of Pammy's father had been harsh and curt:

"Miss Caine, you are to have nothing further to do with my daughter Pamela."

Nora had literally stammered "Wha—what? Why?"

"Apparently you are not aware that there is a second entrance to the women's dressing quarters at the pool," he said coldly. "Pamela's mother was standing there this afternoon, and she saw what happened. Miss Caine, I do not interfere with Pamela's choice of friends, but—" and the voice had gone hard and vicious, "I do not allow my daughters to associate with lesbians." At that time Nora had not even known the word.

He had hung up on her stammered protest, and Nora sank down by the telephone in sudden, shocked comprehension.

She made no effort to justify herself. Pammy had first embraced her, true. But she was older than Pamela (she did not stop to consider that in worldly wisdom she was immeasurably the younger) and she should have prevented it from happening.

She went through the week in dazed and helpless pain, the world bleak and purposeless without Pammy's daily calls. Then autumn came, and she heard that the college of her first choice had accepted her; and when she came home next summer the Bristols had sold the big house and moved to another state, and she had never heard of any of them again—until Jill had walked into her consulting room an hour ago.

Nora felt now mild amusement and pity. She wondered, with retrospective tenderness, if Pammy had been punished. Poor little Pammy.

Nora supposed there was hardly a girl in the world—or boy either—who had not, either on impulse or in deliberate experimental mood, caressed another of his own sex. Such things happened to adolescents; they grew out of them. What had happened with Pammy had been as innocent, and as trivial, as the play of very tiny children. Nora had long ago dismissed any lingering guilt about it.

Or had she? Had the unconscious memory made her, by turns, too kind or too brusque with Jill? Jill, who now seemed so much like Pammy that it seemed incredible Nora had not recognized her at once.

Returning to the present, Nora frowned, pulling on her hooded coat and driving gloves, and went down the highway to her car. She'd already wasted too much time, and Kit was waiting.

CHAPTER 2

It began to snow late that night. Nora, driving back from a tense, unsatisfactory visit to Kit, welcomed the driving sleet; the icy roads, demanding every scrap of her attention, kept her mind off Kit's fierce, longing eyes. She could forget the way his hand had clung, furtively seeking out her breast, until, seeing a nurse's eyes on them, she had had to push his fingers gently aside.

All the next day the snow fell heavily; but toward evening the storm receded, allowing glimpses of a black, bruised-looking sky. At half-past five, Nora sat over a cold cup of coffee in the hotel dining room, impatiently checking her watch; evening office hours began at seven, and so far there was no sign of Mack.

She thought without pleasure of the cold empty farmhouse, and the strange patients; she thought with regret of her own comfortable Albany apartment and the good food and smooth beds of her housekeeper; and for the hundredth time she wished that Dr. Byrd, and his pneumonia, and his broken-down old farmhouse office, and his whole country practice, were all frying together on a choice grid in hell.

She was dreading the meeting with Mack. In a profession which is still not too easy for women, she had learned not to look back much. Youth is not an asset in a doctor; since her twentieth birthday Nora had hidden her youth behind a severe face and businesslike clothes, and now, reminded of the years since she had last seen Mack, she realized that the pretense was now a reality, a part of herself; she was really not young. Had she ever been?

She wondered what the mysterious "her" would be like. It was hard to imagine Mack accounting for his comings and goings to a woman!

The outside door swung open, with a blast of icy wind, and Nora, looking up for Mack, saw Jill Bristol.

She was looking back over her shoulder at a big shaggy-looking man in the doorway, stamping the snow off his feet. He shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog, and turned into the room; and Nora, with a curious feeling of shock and inevitability, recognized Mack.

She rose and came slowly toward them. Jill's eyes met Nora's; a look of panic came suddenly into them, but Mack had not seen.

"Nora! Good to see you," he exclaimed, and seized her hand in both of his. They were big hands, calloused with rough work, and his face, deeply bronzed, had the lines put there by wind and weather. He was four inches taller and forty pounds heavier, but the laughing brown eyes were the same.

"Did we keep you waiting? My car gave up two blocks down the street, and I had to arrange to have it towed." He was still holding her hand. Nora had forgotten that curious clumsy charm of his. She forgot how she had dreaded this meeting. If Jill hadn't been there she would have kissed him. He stooped and brushed her cheek with his lips, still cold with the snowy wind.

"You haven't changed much, Nor." Still holding her hand, he turned to Jill. "Honey, this is my stepsister, Nora Caine—Ellersen," he corrected himself.

"Caine," she smiled, re-correcting him, "at least professionally."

"And this is my fiancée, Jill Bristol."

"But you're Nora," Jill said slowly. "I know you, though you probably don't remember me. Didn't you pal around with my sister, Pam, one summer?" She laughed, that nervous little laugh. "I used to have an awful crush on you."

Mack led the way to the table, holding a chair for Jill, then for Nora. "But where is Kit—I imagine it's the same Kit Ellersen we knew in college, isn't it? There wouldn't be two?"

"No, it's the same one."

"Why didn't you tell me he couldn't make it tonight? We'd have fixed up a time when he could!"

Nora said with a stiff little smile, "That would be difficult, I'm afraid. He's been in the Veteran's hospital for months, and he'll be there till next May."

"Good God!" Mack's grin vanished and he put his hand over Nora's. "What happened?"

She kept her voice flat and expressionless. "It was before I married him. He was in the reserves, and they sent him to Goodfellow Air Force Base, down Texas, as a flying instructor. Some fatheaded cadet who should have washed out of ground training managed to run a training plane into a bunch of telephone wires. They were both smashed up pretty badly."

Mack's hand tightened, painfully hard, on hers. "Me and my big mouth. So that was why you wouldn't break your date last night."

"That was why." Nora stared out the black window. Mack's sympathy made her feel—for the first time in years—like breaking down. Finally she looked up.

"They think, after a couple more operations, he'll have the full use of his legs again. But what about you, Mack? Still digging up buried cities and broken pottery in your spare time?"

"Full time now." Mack took Jill's slender, ringed fingers. "I got stuck behind a university desk for a few years, but I hated it. Then I was in Cambodia with a crew from the Sorbonne, and then—well, there's no time for a full-scale Odyssey, but next month I'm going to Peru with Harry Dunbardon. There's a city back in the Cordilleras—we flew over it a year ago and took aerial photos—"

"Dunbardon! But I saw that in the Geographic, Mack! Was that you?"

"Yours truly. It's back in the eastern range, what they call the Cordillera Oriente—but if I get started talking shop, I won't quit tonight. You know me."

"My letters used to come from the craziest places. Still as foot-loose as ever, then?"

"Well, not quite." He smiled at Jill, then looked at the window, dark with blowing snow. "I expect, before we order dinner, I'd better go and see what's doing on the car. I left it in the garage over there—I need a new one, but it hardly seems worth the trouble, when I'm taking off for Peru in three weeks!" He started to shove back his chair. "But you're not practicing here, are you, Nora?"

She shook her head. "I had an office in the Henderson building—maybe you saw it in the papers when it burned down? Everything gone, of course. I managed to lease office space, with a friend whose partner was retiring, but they couldn't get it fixed up within a month. Then I heard that old Byrd was laid up, and I offered to come out here until he was on his feet again. I've seen lights in the house, but it never occurred to me it was you!"

"And we could have gone right on missing each other," Mack said, "I've been driving to Syracuse two or three times a week—there are two big warehouses full of odds and ends that have to be crated and catalogued and shipped here, there and everywhere." He rose, pulling his coat around his shoulders. "Let me just go and see about the car. You order for me, Jill."

Jill watched him out of sight, then leaned across the table. "Nora, you didn't really recognize me yesterday, did you?"

"After you'd gone, I realized that you looked like Pammy. When are you and Mack going to be married?"

Jill said flatly and politely, "We haven't set a date," and the words were a courteous, but perfectly formed barrier against further questions.

Not so idyllic, then. But it doesn't seem like Mack. Is it his baby?

"Nora, you—you won't tell Mack I consulted you, will you?"

"Why—no, if you don't want me to," Nora said, mildly confused. "Didn't you ever hear of a professional confidence? I certainly wouldn't bring it up, unless you did."

Mack, snowflakes clinging to his thick eyebrows and beading his coat, came back and sat down. "The car's had it. Hope you've got your walking shoes on, Jill."

"I've got my car," Nora said, "I can run you both home before office hours. How far out do you live, Jill?"

Mack looked up sharply, but Jill met Nora's eyes, smiling.

"Well, as a matter of fact, I'm staying with Mack at your old place, and as far as people around here are concerned, I'm calling myself Mrs. MacLellan just now. It doesn't matter, but Mack's been in a stew because he introduced me as Jill Bristol."

Mack muttered, "Well, I wanted to ask Nora to our wedding, so how could I say—" he shrugged helplessly, but Jill reached across the table for his hand, and he smiled at her, his rugged face transformed with love. Nora felt a touch of cruel, sudden envy. She had been cheated of her honeymoon...

They lingered at the table, Nora and Mack exchanging desultory reminiscences; Jill seemed content to listen, saying little. Nora finally had to break it up.

"I'm sorry, but I may have someone waiting for me. If I'm going to drop you off, we'd better get going."

They were crowded in the front seat of her car, and Nora felt Jill's closeness with a small, not unpleasant shock. She stopped at the old house which had once been her home, too, and watched them go up the drive together, Mack's hand protectively beneath Jill's elbow.

As they mounted the snow-laden steps, they turned and waved at her; then Mack drew Jill gently inside. Nora saw a light go on; she shivered, feeling cold and lonely, and shut out in the drifting snow.

After a minute she set her mouth firmly, reached in her pocket for a cigarette and started the car toward her evening's work, the strange rustling house and her cold, lonely bed.

CHAPTER 3

Nora eased her car toward the curb, and rolled down the window. "Jill?" she called, "are you going to Albany? Wouldn't you rather ride? The bus won't be along for twenty minutes yet."

Jill came around the car and got in, and Nora asked, "Where is Mack?"

"He had to go to Syracuse. He wouldn't take me because he's still not sure of the car."

A late thaw had melted most of the snow left by the blizzard; the road was clear of slush, and the sky had a damp, deceptive blueness. Jill sat very straight on her half of the seat, like a well-behaved little girl in mittens and boots. Nora said after a minute, "I'm going to stop off at the lab and pick up your test report. You must be anxious about it."

"Not particularly. The rabbit test is the one they call the Friedman test, isn't it? We used the old Ascheim-Zondek test, with mice, in Syracuse."

Nora raised her eyebrows, startled.

"You certainly are full of surprises," she said. "Where did you learn all that?"

"I majored in biology at Cornell. I worked for a while as a technician in a Syracuse hospital—that's where I met Mack."

"When is Mack leaving for Peru?"

"Next week. Wednesday or Thursday, depending on when he can get a flight."

No wonder she wanted to know right away...

"Are you planning on going with him, Jill?"

"Oh, no. I couldn't."

"Are you—do you mind my asking you? Are you going to stay on in Mayfield after he leaves? What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," said Jill wearily, and Nora, turning her head, saw that her eyes were closed. She had meant the question quite literally, what are you going to do, what are your plans, but the unconscious despair in Jill's voice stopped her cold. It had sounded so helpless, so indecisive, as if—the thought came unbidden—as if the girl had not contemplated any future at all; as if there was nothing she could do after Mack had gone.

Nora made her decision suddenly, as she always made important decisions. "You worked as a technician? Can you do routine blood tests, sedimentation rates, that sort of thing?"

"I did in Syracuse."

"Well, look here, then. Dr. Byrd will be back Monday. A classmate of mine wants a couple of weeks off at Christmas, and I'm still at large—my office isn't ready yet—so I'm going up there. My office girl doesn't want to leave town, so why don't you come along? You could make yourself useful, and I imagine we could keep each other company. Unless you're going home for Christmas."

"I haven't a home to go to," Jill said, and her face warned Nora not to ask questions.

"Well, then, we'll call it settled," Nora said, swinging the car into the lane of traffic over the Hudson bridge. Far below lay the drab winter harbor, ships lying frozen into the greenish ice, and Nora shivered.

"Where shall I let you out? I'm going all the way uptown."

"Anywhere. I'm just going to kill time—maybe go window shopping."

Nora, somehow reluctant to let her go, said "Nonsense. This is no weather to be killing time like that. If you really mean that, come along with me and meet my husband!"

After last time, she was thinking as she turned her car into the hospital parking lot, it's just as well if we aren't alone together...

Jill followed quietly as Nora asked at the lobby desk for a visitor's pass. But as they rode up in the elevator, she said in surprise, "They're awfully formal here, aren't they? If even an outside doctor has to have a pass—"

Without knowing it, Jill had touched a perpetual sore spot in Nora—that in a hospital, of all places, she had to stop and ask permission, like other visitors. No matter how often she did it, it was always newly annoying.

"They'd let me in if they knew I was a doctor," she said at last. "Kit asked me not to mention it."

"Why, I wonder? I'd think he'd be proud."

Nora said, "I don't know." But she knew, very well. Even the surgeon handling Kit's case did not know of his wife's profession. Kit, oddly touchy in some ways, felt that professional collusion—even an ordinary exchange of courtesies between his doctor and his wife—would somehow undermine that ferocious self-sufficiency of his.

"I guess he didn't want me discussing his case behind his back. This way—he's still in a private room since his last operation," she said, and turned in the half-open door.

"Kit, darling!"

Even flattened against his pillows, Kit Ellersen had an air of command. His face, haggard and lined about mouth and eyes, looked disarmingly young; Nora felt the painful wrench, deep in her body, as he grinned at her.

She bent and his arms closed around her; his mouth, hard and hungry, thrust at hers with rough violence. He grasped at her upper arms with painfully strong hands; she felt the scratch of his chin, the electric warmth of his breath, the probe of his tongue against hers, plucking a string of desire—and sudden dread—deep in her body. She drew away.

"We have company, Kit," she said softly.

"Hell," he muttered ungraciously, and raised himself slightly against the pillows. He was rumpled and untidy in his hospital pajamas. He looked at Jill, and suddenly, he smiled.

He had a wonderful smile, so vital that it cancelled the lines of pain and weariness, and he looked as if he were loafing there for the fun of it. It melted Nora, and she saw it work the familiar magic on Jill; the shy and sullen face lit up with an elfish twinkle.

"What a wife," Kit said, "she even rounds up beautiful women for me."

Nora, aware suddenly that her lipstick was smeared all over her face, turned away.

"Don't mind my staring," Kit went on, "but the scenery around here is usually damn monotonous. The nurses are brassy blonde battle-axes, six feet tall and at least forty; and I'm sure they're all frigid—not that I've bothered to find out. And then there are the orderlies, as nice a bunch of queers as you'll find outside Greenwich Village. I must say they let me alone, though." He chuckled. "But if you knew what good it does us just to look at a pretty girl, all you glamorous dolls would line up three deep at the foot of the beds. Come here, honey bun, and do your bit for my morale."

Jill came and gave him her hand. Nora, seeing him through Jill's eyes, felt a surge of defensive love. Kit hated shaking hands because of the rough ridge of scar tissue across his right palm. If Jill stares, Nora thought, I'll break her neck. But she didn't. She smiled and said nicely, "You make me wish I'd dressed up to the occasion."

"You're safer like that," Kit said, studying her, "boots and all. At that, half the patients would chase you for three blocks. Better smuggle her out on a stretcher, Nora."

"Kit, this is Jill Bristol, who's going to marry Mack, and I'm taking her to Fairfax with me—"

"My God," said Kit, "what a waste."

"—as a sort of nurse."

He whistled. "Hey, now, that's more like it. She can nurse me any old time! Let's see, now; how about starting with a bed bath, and then a rubdown, and—"

"Behave," Nora said.

"Behave? What the hell for!" He looked up at Jill with a whimsical smile. "Or must we keep the conversation very, very nice, because you are a very, very nice girl? Nothing above the neck—I mean below the neck? On second thought, I like it better the first way. Give me a cigarette, Nora."

Nora recalled herself. "I brought you a carton, but I left them—Jill, you keep him company."

She had forgotten his cigarettes, talking to Jill; but she could buy a carton downstairs. It was the first time she had forgotten, and she felt ashamed.

She heard him laughing as she returned along the hall. It was good for Kit—to see someone with whom he could talk without perpetual tension of desire, taut between them even when they were at opposite ends of the room.

She heard Jill say in a scandalized tone, "Oh, shame on you!" as she pushed open the door.

"Watch out," said Kit loudly, "here comes my wife. You came back too soon, Nora; in another five minutes I'd have had her in bed. All that work for nothing."

"Oh, don't!" Jill pleaded, her face reddening. "What will Nora think?"

"Unfortunately, honey bun, Nora knows what to think." Kit sighed. "Do I look dangerous, Jill? The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Plenty weak." He took her hand and patted it, big-brother fashion. Nora winced, wondering; had Kit really got to the point where he could laugh, or was this a very subtle way of stirring sexual sympathy?

"I wanted to see you blush," Kit said. "Nora's lost the trick, after seeing so much life in the raw." He took the cigarettes.

"Let me get you—"

"For Christ's sake, my hands aren't incapacitated!" Kit snapped, and tore a pack open, rummaging in the stand for a lighter. "Nora? Jill?"

Nora took one; Jill refused.

"Now tell me about the buried city of Mack's."

"I'm afraid I can't," Jill murmured, "Mack has to put everything into words of one syllable for me."

"Oh, he'll make a fossil hunter out of you, if I know Mack. You'll be tagging along on the next trip with a camera, and all the little MacLellans will learn their ABCs off the walls of King Tut's tomb. I remember one time he dragged us all back into the hills hunting arrowheads—" Kit leaned back on his pillows, absent-mindedly blowing a double smoke-ring. Nora listened, watching him, wishing suddenly that Mack could have come along.

He was still spinning his tale when a loud bell interrupted him, and he flinched. "Hell, I never learn to jump when the thing goes off! I'm afraid that means you have to go."

"Arabian nights," said Jill, smiling at him. "All the best stories break off in the middle, Mr. Ellersen—or do I still say Major?"

"You do not. What you say is Kit. I never let a girl call me names after I've made a pass at her... come up and see me when my wife isn't around, gorgeous."

Nora bent for a kiss, but Jill's eyes seemed to burn through her shoulder blades. What had Kit said to her? Under her mouth Kit's lips were closed; Nora knew, rationally, this was wise, but she could not endure it. She pressed her mouth to his, and Kit went rigid as his lips parted and they blended into the dizzy, hot warmth of the kiss.

Suddenly, shockingly, his hands bit into her shoulders and he pushed her away. A harsh voice behind them said, "Visiting hours are over, Mrs. Ellersen. Didn't you hear the bell? I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave."

Fighting for self-control, Nora accepted her coat from Jill under the glare of the nurse.

Like a jail. Like a damned jail. Prisoners may embrace their wives at meeting and parting. Passionate or prolonged embraces will not be tolerated...

The cold air beat like ice into her hot face. She got into the car, waited impatiently for Jill to settle herself, then thrust the accelerator savagely to the floor.

She drove fast, the accumulated tension spending itself; thrusting in and out of traffic lanes, making turns with an absolute disregard for safety. She did not speak to Jill until they drew up before a solid row of old houses—converted into apartments long ago—and came around on the sidewalk to open the door for her.

"I have to stop and pick up a few things here. But I won't be long."

The December sunlight came into the vestibule with them, making it grimmer by contrast when she closed the door. Jill's light steps behind her made echoes in the stairwell. Nora, seeing light under the door, put her keys away and knocked, and a young woman in a pink house-dress opened the door and stepped back in surprise.

"I didn't expect you today, doctor. Will you be wanting supper?"

Familiar, warm, the apartment closed around Nora; the smell of cinnamon and starched curtains and cedar polish, the streaks of light falling on dark wood, the flame-and-silk glow of the Chinese painting on the wall. Reluctantly Nora shook her head.

"Thanks, Gerda, but don't bother. I just came to get a few things from my desk. You might make us some coffee, if it wouldn't be too much bother. Any messages?"

"Mail's on your desk. You might call Miss Barbieri and check up." Gerda went through the door at the back, and Nora began to move restlessly around the room.

"Take off your coat, Jill, you'll be cold when you go out. Would you like a drink?"

Jill fingered her sweater button. "No, thanks. I mean—really, I'd rather have coffee."

Nora went through into the shiny kitchen. Coffee would be better, she supposed, with that long drive ahead. Though, in this cold weather, alcohol would be burned up as fast as it was consumed. "I'll do that, Gerda," she said, put cups and sugar on a tray, then shrugged and took, from a top shelf, an unopened bottle of whisky.

A crawling tension still seemed to creep, like a live thing, down her back. Kit's mouth... Jill, damn her, watching. With furious effort she switched off the picture in her mind, and went into the living room. Jill was standing at the far end, examining the framed silk painting.

"Coffee, Jill. Sure you wouldn't care for a drink?" Nora twisted the seal open, and while Jill sugared her coffee, poured herself a drink. She drank it quickly, feeling it sting and burn in her throat; the warmth hit her stomach, and the crawling tension melted and let go.

Nora smiled wryly; that could be dangerous, if a drink hits me that quick and helps that much. Firmly she put the cap back on the bottle and picked up her coffee cup, smiling at Jill—why treat a stranger to her moods?

"I saw you admiring my Chinese painting."

"Is it Chinese? It's beautiful."

"I was born in China. I thought Mack might have mentioned it."

"No, he didn't. I know he was, though."

"My father was a correspondent for one of the news services—that was long before the Reds took over, of course. We lived there until I was eleven."

From somewhere a big Siamese cat materialized, and, ghosting gray across the carpet, rubbed against Nora's shoes.

"Bad animal, Archy, where were you hiding?"

He twisted himself blissfully around her nylon legs, and Nora picked him up, rubbing his sleek head. "I had a Chinese nurse, a converted Christian who for some reason went and had herself baptized Mary Jesus. Poor old Mary Jee, they wouldn't let her come back to the States with us, I suppose she's dead now. She was all the mother I had—my own mother died when I was just a baby. Mack's mother was a medical missionary in Pekin—I was about nine, and Mack about twelve, when they married."

A stir of old guilt touched her with a scorpion tail as the coffee cancelled the effect of the drink. The last glimmer of sunset at the window, filtered to glints of brightness and shadow, made patterns on Jill's upturned peach-face as she curled into the sofa cushions. She had taken off her boots at the door, and her shoes had come off with them; her feet looked tiny and bare in her nylons.

I wonder where Pammy is? Married? Half a dozen kids, probably, a nice suburban housewife? I ought to ask Jill. Send her a Christmas card, maybe. She put down her cup with a little crash and the cat jumped off her lap.

"Archy. Archy, be good!" she coaxed.

"Archy as in archy and mehitabel?"

"No. Short for Archimedes. That cat would move the world, if he could find a place to stand while he was doing it."

Jill stretched a wheedling hand to the cat, who stalked aloofly past her. Jill said "Darn," and pulled uneasily at her blouse. "There goes my slip strap."

"On my dressing table—through there—there's a tray of pins." Nora pointed. "Help yourself. I'll just collect the things I came for."

She selected the things she wanted from her desk, packed them into the old leather briefcase, and followed Jill into the bedroom. "Did you get it fixed?"

Jill turned shyly away. "It keeps slipping down in back."

"Here, I'll get it." Jill's blouse was unbuttoned to her waist, the brown tips of her breasts lifting the thin creamy lace of her slip. As Norma put her hand on the soft bare shoulder and turned her around, she felt the surge of an emotion she had thought long buried. Jill looked so little, so helpless, someone to protect and shelter. A rush of anger crested in her as she thought of Mack. How dared he?

She fished for the erring strap, repairing it with brisk efficiency.

"Oooh, your hands are cold!" Jill squealed, and Nora, abashed, took them away. As Jill buttoned her blouse, Nora picked up her coat and held it, then touched her lightly on the cheek. She realized, a moment later, that she had almost kissed her.

"I think my brother is a very lucky man," she said softly, "and I hope he knows it."

Outside in the darkening hallway she paused, the sudden warmth she had felt for Jill evaporating sharply.

"Don't let me forget to pick up your pregnancy test."

Jill laid a light hand on Nora's arm. "Nora, I—I don't want the test report. Please. I'll pay for it, but don't pick it up, please don't tell me. I—don't want to know yet."

"For heaven's sake, why not?"

The girl bit her Up. "I think I'd rather—just wait and see."

Nora frowned, impatient, confused and a little annoyed. "Suit yourself," she said, rather more sharply than usual, "that's what I suggested in the first place, remember. Come on, it's going to be dark before we get back."

CHAPTER 4

The old farmhouse was filled with creaks and rustles; a bitter wind, fogged with snow, hurled itself angrily at the shutters, making faces on the dark pane. Nora, bundled into corduroy slacks, was curled up between the coal range and the kitchen table. It was the only warm place in the house.

The door banged, and Nora jumped, then settled back, relieved. Her first night, a tree slapping on the roof had gotten her out of bed three times. But the banging went on, and finally she caught the sound of a voice. She jumped up and hurried to the door.

It opened into a whirl of white flakes, and Mack's face appeared against the night behind them.

"Nora, I know it's awfully late—"

"But I'm glad to see you. I thought it was a patient."

She drew him inside and slammed out the wind. "Nothing wrong, I hope?"

"No, but I did want to talk to you.'

She gestured to him to throw his snowy mackinaw on a settle. "Come into the kitchen. This old barn is colder than Alaska—no wonder Byrd got pneumonia. Through here." She noted for the first time the slight hesitation—not quite a limp—in his step. Her subconscious monitor remarked, imperfect articulation of the patella, but she shut it off impatiently. Mack stood over the range, spreading his hands to the penetrating warmth.

"Is that coffee I smell?"

"Want some?"

"Foolish question." He eased himself into a chair, relaxing with a sigh. "Coffee always was your remedy for most human ills. I'll bet you prescribe it for half your patients."

"I'd starve if I did," she said tartly, pouring him a cup, "unless I could package it as a new miracle drug. Still like it black?"

He nodded, laying his hand on his left knee. "I saw you taking this in."

"Army?"

"No, I came through Korea without a scratch—no thanks to the Reds. This was just a few months ago—pile of granite blocks fell over and smashed the kneecap. It still goes stiff when I'm tired."

Nora sat down with her own coffee, wondering if this would be a professional call after all. But physical tiredness, or even pain, didn't bring that look to a man's eyes.

"You didn't come out in a blizzard just for the pleasure of my company, did you?"

He smiled shyly. "Well, I might have, at that. After all these years. And I felt bad not to have the time to see old Kit. It's a rough deal for both of you."

Nora moved her hand, restlessly. The last thing she wanted was sympathy from Mack; it would probably break her up.

He was looking at her with kindly pity. "You're tough, Nora," he said, "too tough, maybe. I never would let you be a girl, would I? I don't remember ever seeing you cry, except when Dad died."

"Don't," Nora said, and looked helplessly at Mack, remembering the other time she had cried.

"Your Dad used to say you were a better man than I was. That doesn't give me the right to run to you with all my problems, but—Nora," he burst out suddenly, "for God's sake, will you look after Jill when I'm gone?"

Nora stared at him, startled more by the tone than the words.

"Mack, Jill's not a child. She may not want to be looked after." And furthermore, the kind of looking after she wants is your job, not mine.

"Oh, she's over the age of consent, I guess. But—Nora —under that poise—hell, Jill's just a—a scared little kid!"

Nora wanted to ask; what do you expect? Where's the wedding ring? But Jill had come to her professionally, and in confidence.

"Nora, Jill and I have been together four months, and in all that time—do you realize, she's never told me one damn thing about herself? Oh, little things—she likes strawberries, she sang in a woman's choir at college, she used to live in Mayfield—that stuff. But anything about her past, about her family—my God, she might have dropped down from outer space the day before I met her!"

"She didn't, I knew the family. Don't you remember the big Bristol place out on Sumner road?"

"I guess they moved away while I was in Oklahoma. One of them? They had a pack of little girls, didn't they? The point is, why hasn't Jill ever told me anything? Nora, somewhere, somehow, that girl has been through hell!"

He stared gloomily into his cup.

"I'd stay, but it would tie the expedition up in knots. Harry was supposed to leave for Peru six months ago, and I was laid up with the damn knee. I told him, forget it, go ahead without me, but he held up twelve people and two millionaire backers until I was on my feet again. Damn, damn!" He slammed the table with his huge fist, and the cups rattled. "We've planned this thing for three years. I begged Jill to come with me—Dunbardon and Jim Howart have their wives with them—and she won't. I begged her to marry me before I go, and she won't. I'm going nuts!"

Nora frowned in sympathy. "There's no other man?"

"Hell no. I mean—well—she was a virgin." He could not meet Nora's eyes. "Okay. I'm a louse."

"I didn't mean that, exactly."

"Yes you did, exactly. But damn it to hell, I can't grab her by the hair and haul her off to the local JP, can I? Look—can I tell you something, Nor—man to man?"

The phrase of their teens made her smile. "Well, I'm a doctor, Mack, and fairly well acquainted with the facts of life. You're not apt to shock me these days."

He laughed uneasily. "Okay, then. I—I figured if she was pregnant, she'd have to marry me before I left. I'd always been—careful before. I just—quit being so careful. But she hasn't said—"

To ward off the pointblank question she could not ethically answer, Nora said, "Are you positive she isn't married already?"

"Damn it, I told you she was a virgin!"

"I heard you. But men have been fooled before."

Mack rose, his eyes like flints, and loomed over her. "Now you look here—"

"All right, all right," she said hastily, "keep your hair on. There's no proof she hasn't been through a marriage ceremony with somebody, is there?"

Mack sank back, his face a dull brick-color. "I didn't mean to fly off the handle, Nora. But I'm worried. I'm not a ladies' man. Oh, I know my way around—" he grinned sheepishly, "but this isn't a shack-up. I'm crazy about Jill. Look. She—she understands my work. She doesn't know a damn thing about it, she doesn't know a potsherd from a barrow, but she understands it, if you follow me."

"She knows what it means to you?"

"That's it. And she's well, natural. Sex, sure." He looked away. "But the rest of the time it's like being with another man, or with you."

"And that's what you like?"

"Hell, yes. When I'm laying a girl, I'm laying her. But the rest of the time, I want somebody around who can treat me like a person—not a Romeo. Most women—well, between lays, they want you to act as if that was all you had on your mind—the next roll in the hay. Jill's not that way. I don't have to play up to her. I read some place— 'Love is to man a thing apart, to woman 'tis her whole existence'. A woman like that would bore hell out of me."

"Then you ought to be glad Jill's not in a hurry to tie you down, shouldn't you?"

"But that's just the point," Mack yelled, "I found the girl I want, and now I want her—to keep! I want her wrapped up in a package with my name on it! I want her in my bed and in my house, with my kids in her little belly! Get me?"

The maleness of that demand twisted inside Nora, like a fist in her vitals. She remembered Kit, gripping her angrily;

I'm not going to let you get away from me while I'm in the hospital! You're going to marry me now!

They had both risen; Mack was standing close to her. "Nora, after we leave Lima we may not even get mail regularly. Now look. I've never told Jill—she thinks there's only one kind of woman who would take money from a man. But I put my commission from the Sorbonne job—a couple of thousand—in the bank in Syracuse, in her name. If she needs it—or anything happens to me—" he fished in a pocket and laid a bankbook on the table. "And I'd want her to have my equity in the house, too. I think you could talk her into taking it. Just promise me, and I'll sleep easy."

Nora looked into his worried face, wondering how many tragedies would be averted if doctors and priests could tell what they knew. Mack and Jill were not patients, they were friends—family! But the habit of years was too much for her.

"I promise, Mack..."

"You're an angel!" He scooped her into a warm hug. "Why in hell did we ever lose touch, kid?"

For a moment, warmed and comforted beyond measure—how starved she had been for some affectionate touch—she lay against him, and he took her face in his big hands and kissed her. Then, to her horror and dismay, she felt an old, hated stirring. She pulled quickly free. "Take it easy, Mack," she said, and her voice shook.

"Oh, Christ!" Mack stepped back, with a troubled smile. "Are you still holding that against me? Look—Nor—it was buried, years and years ago. I swear. You're my sister, for God's sake. My sister! I was half asleep and half drunk and just a dumb kid—" his face looked as if he were going to cry.

Nora quickly mastered herself, with a false little laugh. "Sure, it's buried. I'm sorry, Mack, I'm a little raw-edged." She stood on tiptoe and quickly kissed his cheek. "Don't worry about Jill."

He still looked troubled. "Nor, I dumped my troubles on you, like always. But I've got a good big brotherly shoulder, you know. If you want to do some bawling on it."

"Thanks, But it was just a mood." How in hell, she wondered, can you tell Mack—or anybody—a thing like that?

* * *

The snow had stopped by the time she picked Jill up late the next day. Mack had left that morning.

Fairfax lay far to the north in New Hampshire, a little town buried in the mountains near the Canadian border. After some study of her road maps, Nora took the highway north from Albany, left it at Hoosick Falls and plunged into a succession of gradually worsening county roads.

All that afternoon they drove through Christmas-card New England scenery; in village after village the streets were strung with colored lights, and as the winter dusk closed down they began to glow, every house adorned with red and green and yellow colors. Jill began to hum, then to sing in a clear soprano:

"When Joseph was a-walking, He heard angels sing, This night shall be born Our heavenly King. He shall not be born In house nor in hall..."

"Don't stop," said Nora. "You have a pretty voice."

Jill hummed for a minute. "We sang that at the carol service in college. I've been thinking I might go back and work on a master's degree this winter."

Then it must be all right and she isn't pregnant. But it was like a weight on her heart. "Cornell?"

"Loudon College in Albany. The Dean said I could earn my tuition by supervising freshman laboratory periods. But I'd hate living in a woman's dorm at my age."

Nora remembered she did not know. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

And again on impulse, Nora made an offer which, if she had stopped to think, she might have foregone.

"You can stay with me until Kit gets out of the hospital. We seem to get along."

Jill smiled. "I'd like that," she said shyly.

The snow was beginning to flurry across the road again; Nora, pulling off to consult the map, found that Fairfax still lay across forty miles of bad, hilly roads. "What possessed Reynolds to live up here, I'll never know," she grumbled. "Shall we stop for the night somewhere? They may not get a snowplow into the hills before tomorrow."

"They probably won't, if I know Vermont."

"Then keep an eye out for a place to stay."

The next tourist court was only a row of shabby cabins under a dull orange sign. "It doesn't look like much," Nora hesitated.

"I'm game for anything but bedbugs," Jill giggled, as Nora guided the car under the wooden arch. She went in to sign for them both; an old man in a peajacket glanced at the signature and produced a key. "Doctor, hey? Cabin four."

They had stopped for supper two towns ago; and Nora, who had been up at five that morning, was already yawning. The room was warm, with a gas fire, and Nora stood over it gratefully, holding out her hands to the warmth, before she took in the rest of the room; the plain maple furniture made comfortable with cushions and chintz, the wide chenille-covered double bed. Oh-oh, she thought. She had expected twin beds, but had forgotten to specify, forgetting that she was with a comparative stranger. Jill had pulled off her boots and was rubbing her toes, and Nora thought irritably; they probably thought we were mother and daughter! She looks about fifteen! .

Jill was deep in her suitcase. "You can have the bathroom first. Age before beauty," she said flippantly.

Long habit, and the need for haste in emergencies, had made Nora an efficiency expert; when she came out of the shower, in pajamas and robe, Jill jerked around, startled, her slip half over her head. She snatched her nightgown and pulled it down.

“All yours." Nora started to take the pins from her braids. "Did you think I was a prowler?"

"You're very quick—"

"You learn that when you're on call twenty-four hours a day. In my intern year I could shower, dress and do my hair in six minutes and nineteen seconds. We women had the edge on the men because we didn't have to shave."

In the mirror she saw Jill wriggling out of her panties in the shelter of her nightgown. The gown was so thin she might as well have had nothing on. Nora, unravelling the last few inches of her plait, remembered Pammy's mother, Jill's mother. Doubtless she had taught her daughters that a nice young lady always undressed beneath her nightgown. Nora wondered what Mack thought about it.

She brushed her hair slowly, luxuriating in the rare prospect of a night of unbroken sleep—no telephone, no hospital within reach—and before she finished she saw Jill behind her, watching her in the mirror. She smiled, her face half hidden in the weight of rippling hair that flowed down to her waist, the color of a new penny.

"It's beautiful," Jill said, "but I'd never have the patience to fuss with it. Isn't it hard to wash?"

"Not as hard as you'd think. Now where in the deuce did I put my warm slippers? Confound it, I'll bet they're in the big suitcase in the car."

"Didn't you put them in your briefcase, that day in your apartment?"

"Why, so I did. Now if I can find the briefcase—"

"Here it is." Jill handed it to her, glancing at the stamped monogram. "Whose initials?"

"L. C. R. Mine. Leonora Caine Rannock. My first husband gave it to me."

"I didn't know you'd been married before."

"It was years ago. I was just a kid—nineteen." It had been a long time since Nora had let herself think about that hasty, disastrous and long dissolved marriage with Les Rannock.

"It was the usual kid thing," she said at last, taking out her slipper; but instead of putting it on she sat turning it inside-out and right-side-to, again and again. "We were crazy to sleep together, and being very young and very moral, we called it love and talked our families into letting us get married first. It was marvelous for about a year—as long as we could make up all our quarrels in bed. When that started to wear off, we realized we'd sold ourselves a deal. Les wanted a housewife and kids. I wanted medical school. If we'd had children, I would have stuck it out, like everyone else. But we—didn't." With a little gesture of finality she slid the slipper on her foot.

"Speaking of initials. I noticed your luggage is marked GCB. Is Jill short for Gillian?"

"It isn't a G, it's a C. Jill's just a nickname—my sister Jacqueline and I were always Jack and Jill. I was named for Daddy, Cassandra Carroll; you see, he was Alexander Carroll, and Cassandra and Alexander are the same name—"

She stopped and gasped, her pixie face suddenly bone-white. Nora started to speak, and stopped. All Jill's reticence, the curious shadow of tragedy Mack had sensed, became clear. Jill stood frozen, her hands out as if to ward off a blow.

"So you know. I'm Cassandra Bristol, and my father was Alex Bristol. Now you know."

Nora had never guessed that the Alexander Bristol of the Hartford narcotics scandal, the suicide, the murder indictment, was Pamela's stern father. The tabloid pictures of Cassandra Bristol, white and shrunken, her arm protectingly over her face, had looked like no one on earth—certainly not Pammy's little sister.

Alex Bristol had been uncovered, after months of detective work, as head of the best organized narcotics ring east of Chicago. The papers had painted him a sinister Fagin, using his beautiful daughters to deliver innocent looking packages—of heroin. When apprehended, he had shot himself; the girl had been held on suspicion of murder, but the formal verdict had been suicide. No evidence had been found to shake her protestations of innocence, or to implicate her in the drug trade.

"I saw the papers. I didn't know it was you."

Jill sat down, not deliberately but as if her knees would no longer hold her up. "Mack doesn't know. He was in Peru—"

Nora laid her hands on the girl's bare shoulders. "Don't, dear. Don't. I'd never believe anything bad of you! The courts found you innocent, and that's enough for me."

"It wasn't enough for my family." Jill squeezed her eyes tight shut, a child's pathetic grimace. "They thought Daddy shot himself to keep from having to testify against me—my own mother—oh, none of this will mean anything unless you know how I felt about my father—"

"Jill, you don't have to tell me anything."

"I was always Daddy's pet. Mother—well, Pammy was so pretty and popular, and Jackie so clever, and Susan—and well, I was the clumsy one in the middle. Mother kept hunting up nice boys for me, but they were just people to dance with, until after I met Jeff. Jeff Stearns—the detective. I know now he—he just got acquainted with us because he was working on the case, but I—I thought it was me he liked. I thought he was in love with me. I didn't have any idea he was a—a policeman. Daddy never liked him, and Mother said he wasn't quite our sort—"

Nora smiled grimly, remembering Mrs. Bristol's harsh judgments.

"But I said he was the only man I knew who cared for anything except tennis and cocktail parties, and I liked him—" Jill twisted her hands together and whispered harshly, "and if I hadn't, Daddy might be alive now."

"And still making addicts. Child, do you know anything at all about heroin?"

Jill said thickly, "That's the awful thing. If I'd been the one to find it out, I might even have gone to the police myself. Drugs—"

She began to shiver, and the words rushed from her uncontrollably, as if she could no longer hold them back.

"Jeff came to pick me up for a swimming party, and I had an errand for Daddy. There was an old man to whom Daddy sent a bottle of brandy every few weeks. At least, that's what I thought. But Jeff went with me, and when I handed it over he—he grabbed it and broke it, and there was some white powder. I thought Daddy had been playing a joke on the old guy. I said right away quick— Talcum powder, and I—I laughed, and Jeff—oh, it was awful, he—he said I'm sorry, Cassandra, and then he said I have a warrant for your arrest on charges of dealing unlawfully in narcotic drugs…"

She began to sob, tears streaming down her face. " I didn't know—Daddy had been arrested when I left the house. The next day they let us out on bond, and—Daddy took me home and said I mustn't talk about it. He gave me a sleeping pill—oh, I'd cried and cried until my eyes were swollen shut, but I still believed it was some horrible mistake.

"Daddy kissed me and went downstairs and I heard the shot and ran down in my nightie and I—I found him. He was sitting in his old leather chair and there was blood all over his face and I guess I must have gone crazy because I grabbed the gun and I thought I'd shoot myself too and get it all over with, only it was empty and Mama came and took it away from me. She thought I'd shot him, only there were powder burns on his own hands—" her voice strangled and she collapsed on the bed, huddled over in misery. Nora sat beside her and took her hands.

"You poor kid! And you never told Mack?"

"I—was afraid—"

"Jill, it wouldn't matter to him; believe me. Any more than it does to me."

Jill sat up. "It's nice of you to say that," she said dully, "but you don't have to. I'll go away."

"Go? Go where? Why?" Nora asked. "Don't be a fool. It's too late to make new arrangements even if I wanted to—which I don't. I'm counting on you." She added shortly because she had been deeply moved, "If we have to talk about it—but I don't think it's necessary—leave it till tomorrow."

Jill blinked, her mouth still trembling, and Nora stopped, realizing in shock what she had been about to do; she had been about to take Jill in her arms.

She did not touch Jill. By an act of will she did not.

"Go to bed, kid, you look worn out."

Jill climbed obediently under the covers, pulling up the quilt to her chin. Nora switched out the light and lay down beside her, feeling the girl's body warmth in the cold, dampish sheets. Poor kid. So that was behind her strangeness—her odd distrust of Mack, her sudden silences—as if the first men she had trusted and loved had only been trying to entrap her. Nora reached out and touched the thin wrist.

"Don't you worry about anything."

"Thanks." It was the tiniest of whispers. Soon Nora could tell from Jill's quiet breathing that she had fallen into that heavy sleep which comes on so quickly after hysteria.

Nora found herself too strung-up to sleep. Also, she was still fighting the curious impulse she had discovered in herself—to take the girl in her arms. Her whole body ached, simply for a human touch.

Good grief, she told herself, half amused and half so shocked that she had to cover it up with amusement, you and Pammy.

After a time she dropped asleep and began to dream. She dreamed she was lying in the wide bunk of the cabin at home, Mack beside her, between herself and the fire. And Mack in her dream turned and bared his man's body, his man's sex to her... she woke with an inexpressible start of guilt and shame to realize that Jill, fast asleep, had flung a snuggling arm around her, cuddling herself into the curve of Nora's body.

Carefully, Nora freed herself. Oh damn, she thought desperately. Grow up, Nora, You've had erotic dreams before this. But the tension of self-disgust remained. Mack. Mack, of all people. Your brother…

And then the real memory behind the dream came stalking out of the dark corner where she had buried it, at fourteen. The real camping trip and the long ride over the mountain trails, and the flint arrowheads they had found in the bed of the stream.

They had cooked supper over Mack's campfire, and he gave her a few sips of the beer he had brought for himself. They spread their blankets outside, where they could watch the stars. Near dawn a sudden thundershower drenched them both, and they grabbed their blankets and scooted for the cabin. They had stripped down and rubbed each other dry, and Mack had put one of his shirts on her. They drank what was left of the beer and it warmed them; then they snuggled together into the wide bunk, clinging together under the one dry blanket.

Then she had kissed him good night, and, in play, pulled him down over her bare body. For a while he was only teasing and tickling her; then quite suddenly the laughter was gone and Mack leaned down and kissed her, hard and seriously, in a new way.

"Nor," he whispered, "Oh, Nora!" and, scared and excited, she felt the hard rise of his maleness against her bare thighs.

He was hazily drunk. She felt too comfortable, too warm and happy and loving, to care; and besides, she was not quite sure what it meant. But then, with a gasp like pain, he tore loose from her arms.

"Christ! What am I doing? You're my sister!"

Cold and rejected, her heart bumping, she tried to snuggle against him. "What's the matter, Mack? I was just loving you." But he got up, visibly shaken, pulling on his damp trousers.

"I love you, too, pink-top. But you're a lot too big to play that way. Or didn't anybody ever tell you the facts of life?"

Sudden comprehension hit her, like a fist. "But—but you're NOT my brother," she protested, half crying, "we're not related at all. We could even get married!"

He laughed, but shakily. "But you're a lot too young for—for petting parties, pink-top. Heavy necking with my own stepsister is a little too low for me." He bent over her, tenderly. "Come on, Nor, don't cry. I'm not mad at you. Look, you don't—you don't really want to, either. I'd have to hurt you. You wouldn't really like it at all. Come on, now. Give your big brother a nice kiss, and go to sleep like a good girl." He gave her a little peck that was worse than a slap, and Nora cried herself to sleep in the cold bunk alone.

She never cried again. They never spoke of it again. But he had turned cold and strange. He left off kissing her good night or hugging and wrestling with her in the old way she had loved. The memory lay, shaming and cold, at the back of her thoughts, whenever any boy made a move toward her.

Next summer Mack had gone to work on a ranch, and Nora wrapped herself in her books and her studies, blaming herself for his self-imposed exile. Until that summer with Pammy…

The grown-up Nora said angrily to herself, it's past. You've got work to do tomorrow. Go to sleep.

But she did not close her eyes again.

CHAPTER 5

Fairfax was a rural community, and the county hospital was under-staffed, under-equipped, and managed or mismanaged in a primitive fashion which made Nora's hair stand on end. They were in the grip of an early influenza epidemic, and for the first few days there was more than enough to do.

Nora had had more than enough of camping out in another doctor's living quarters. She and Jill had taken rooms in a boarding house. She spent office hours in Reynolds' consulting rooms, made his rounds at the hospital, and tacked up a card on his door, saying that in emergencies she could be reached at the boarding house—as she all too frequently was.

The weeks slipped by to Christmas Eve. Nora—found the waiting room empty, made rounds at a hospital with empty beds for the first time—every patient who could possibly wheedle his way out had maneuvered to spend Christmas at home—and took Jill to dinner in town. But she grimaced with premonition as they came out into the street.

"What do you bet I get called out tonight?"

"No odds," said Jill. "Is it always like this?"

"Always. But let's walk around the square, anyhow."

The shop windows glowed with lighted trees and holly and red bows and balls. The drug store was jammed with tinsel trinkets and last minute shoppers. For years Nora had ignored Christmas, except as a source of too many highway accidents jamming the emergency clinics; she thought the town looked like a carnival midway, but the sarcasm was gentle and without malice. They separated, drifting around the bright displays, and Nora bought various odds and ends because the atmosphere tempted her to self-indulgence—a silver pencil, a new lipstick, cologne, a box of chocolates.

Outside the lighted square the streets were darker and snowier, and they had to pick their way through deep drifts; the snow and starlight transformed the evergreens on every lawn into silvered Christmas trees. Jill's nose was a little red candle nipped with frost as they climbed the stairs of the boarding house. They tossed their packages on Jill's bed, and sat there, rummaging in the parcels.

"What's in that green box?" Jill asked.

Nora shoved it at her. "Your Christmas present."

The girl unwrapped it, hesitantly, and pulled the glass stopper from the bottle. "Oh, lovely. What is it?"

"Jasmine, I think. I got it because you said you liked the sachet scent in my suitcase."

"I remember." Jill raised herself on her elbow. "I didn't get you a present. I couldn't think what you'd like."

Her smile melted into a deep dimple at the corner of her mouth. She reached up and put her two arms around Nora's neck. Taken off balance, Nora fell across her; and to keep herself from toppling off the bed, laid one elbow on either side of Jill. Jill smiled, and kissed her.

For several seconds Nora felt the girl's lips, warm and full, under hers. Then her senses erupted and she quickly pulled away and sat up. She was breathless, and there was an odd ache in her breasts that seemed to stab upward from her innermost and most sheltered parts.

She calmed her face deliberately. The wisest thing was to take it at exact face value. A harmless, meaningless gesture of affection. A Christmas present.

"Good night, my dear," she said. "Sleep well."

In her room she pulled off her clothes and lay down. She felt her heart pounding and subsiding, and her mind, trained to flat literal honesty, put the thing into words. She had kissed another girl—and found herself sexually aroused and responding.

She heard Jill moving in the other room, the splash of running water in the bath. Lying in her wide and rather hard bed, Nora felt again the slow pounding in her blood. After a long time a crack of light widened in the doorway, and her dazzled eyes saw Jill pressed into the narrow space.

"Asleep, Nor?"

Nora rubbed her eyes and sat up, not sure. "I don't think so. Want something?"

She flicked a light switch, and Jill came across the room barefoot and sat on the edge of the bed.

"No, I just wasn't sleepy. You don't mind?"

"Not at all," said Nora, not truthfully.

The light threw a feathery halo around the tumbled edges of Jill's hair; her creamy skin had a lustre that dulled the silk of the nightgown.

Nor frowned. "You're a walking invitation to the flu bug," she said irritably, tugged one end of the quilt loose, and flung it at Jill. "Put this around you, if you want to sit and talk." After she said it she realized that as a sin of omission it was perfectly transparent. Normally she would have said, Here, get in under the covers.

"You really don't mind?"

"No, I'm not sleepy either. For years I've taken it for granted that anybody can haul me out of bed at any time of the night; I doubt if I could sleep eight hours straight." She took a cigarette, offered the pack to Jill. "I suppose Mack's in Lima by now. Did you give him this address?"

"How could I? I didn't know it. It's a shame you can't be with Kit at Christmas, Nora."

"In the hospital it would be like any other day."

"Nora, how did you come to marry Kit? Was he your patient?"

Nora told herself the question was natural enough; there was no reason to treat it as morbid curiosity—the curiosity she had seen in the faces of some of her friends; how did she come to marry a cripple?

"No, Kit was never my patient, thank God," she said at last. "I didn't meet him—I mean; we'd known each other at college; he was Mack's room-mate for two years. They were very close. But after we graduated, I didn't see him again until a year after his accident. He's an architect, you know. He designed the new wing at St. Margaret's hospital…"

As she told the story it seemed to flicker past her eyes, small images moving on a screen of memory. The day she and Vic Demorino—they were still going everywhere together, in those days—had gone into the shell of the new building. The workers were all on their lunch hour— otherwise they would never have gotten through the maze of NO TRESPASSING signs.

As Vic pointed out where the new orthopedic wing would be, she tugged his arm in dismay, looking at a thin dark man on crutches, precariously balanced in the angle of a half-finished stairway not yet fully nailed in place. He was drinking coffee from a paper cup, his back turned to them.

Vic, his professional authority roused, left Nora and hurried across the concrete slab, littered still with discarded tools. He snapped, "You! You up there, what in the devil are you doing out here? Patients aren't allowed out of their own wards. Put that thing down and get back where you belong!"

The man set down the paper cup, swung round and began to navigate the dangerous stairwell with insolent authority. Even before he spoke, Nora knew that Vic had made a gross mistake.

"Guess again, doctor," he said with a cocky grin. "I'm no patient here. Find somebody else to boss around."

Vic had flushed a dark, unlovely red.

"In that case," he said coolly, "may I ask what you are doing here? Quite aside from a certain professional concern—it would be regrettable if you broke your neck on those stairs—you are trespassing on hospital property."

"Listen, you stuffed-shirt bastard," the lame man had yelled suddenly, "I'll tell you who's trespassing! You are! I'm building this damn place, doctor. Now you just turn around and get the hell back where you belong before I give you one on your goddamn nose!"

Nora had stepped forward hurriedly, anxious to placate them both. "Please forgive us," she said, "I know we shouldn't be here. It was my fault—" she fumbled for a hasty lie. "I have a patient who looks a lot like you, and I asked Vic to get you down. People do silly things sometimes. I'm very sorry."

He had stared at her ungraciously, then, suddenly, his wrath had melted and he smiled. She noticed that he was handsome when he smiled. "Hey, for Pete's sake," he said, "aren't you Nora Rannock? Oklahoma University?"

Startled, she nodded and he held out his hand.

"Kit Ellersen—remember me now? Yeah, I know—I've changed a lot."

Nora, feeling gauche and embarrassed, murmured, "No, I'd have known you anywhere, if I'd been expecting to see anyone I knew."

"May I show you around?"

"I'd love to—" Nora began, but Vic interrupted curtly, "Thanks, but we have to get back. Sorry I intruded, Ellersen," and hustled her away.

Knowing Vic was painfully embarrassed about his mistake Nora had not tried to keep him. But that night when she left the hospital, Kit had been waiting near the entrance.

"I—er—wanted to apologize for my language," he said diffidently, "I'm sure you were only worried—trying to do your duty."

"Oh, that's all right.'

"How's Mack?" he asked.

"He's in Cambodia, I think."

Kit chuckled. "And Rannock? I never knew him very well."

"Neither did I," Nora said quietly, "I divorced him before I went to medical school," and Kit's flashing grin came back.

"I was angling for that. Now I can ask you out to dinner myself."

Nora opened her lips to refuse politely. She and Vic Demorino had had—as always—an unspoken agreement to meet that night. Tentative, as all their dates were; like all doctors, they had to put their work first. There was no such thing as a pre-arranged free evening for either of them. But for months now, it had been an understood thing; if they were both free, they would meet.

It had seemed natural enough to pair off with Vic. From the time she had come to the hospital, they had been a couple. At first this pairing-off had been informal and by accident—except for a couple of wet-eared interns fresh from medical school who treated Nora like an elderly aunt, Vic was the only unmarried man on the staff. Later, as they discovered mutual likes and dislikes, a strong attraction had flared up between them. They had been sleeping together and they spent as much time with each other as they possibly could.

But that day, looking at Kit, a sudden anger at Vic had flared up in her. She had seen him that afternoon at his dictatorial worst. She was eager to make amends to Kit—not only for her own gauche behavior, but for Vic's offensive manners. Vic, after all, had been unbearably rude, and all too ready to make her a party to it.

She smiled at Kit and said, "I'd love to. I'm not busy tonight," and that was where it had begun. It had been though she did not know it at the time, the end of Vic Demorino, except as a colleague she liked.

She had married Kit three months later, still surprised at herself, a little breathless at his insolent violence, his bubbling humor, the unexpected, caged sensuality that had made her feel as breathless, as foolishly romantic as any adolescent virgin...

She came back to the present, blinking at Jill, who sat curled up, her crossed legs displaying silky, bare shins and small white ankles.

"Now it's your turn. You tell me how you met Mack."

"I thought maybe he'd told you. I was working as an X-ray technician in a Syracuse hospital, and he used to come in for checkups—it doesn't show, but he has a stiff knee. He asked me for a date, and I said I didn't date men I didn't know. He said he thought I knew him all the way to the bones. And, well, I did, and we just—kept on, and when he came to Mayfield he asked me to come, too, and I did."

Prodded by a memory, Nora said abruptly, "Jill, have you menstruated yet? If not, you're probably pregnant, and you ought to let him know before he leaves Lima."

Jill did not look up. She said, "I want to be able to tell him, honestly, that I didn't know."

"Jill, denying a fact won't change—"

"Please. If I send Mack word, he'll come back, and never blame me. But it would kill him to give up this trip. He's wanted it all his life. I'd feel like a bitch to spoil it for him!" The unexpected vulgarity, so out of key for the quiet Jill, somehow lent point to her words.

Nora could sympathize with that, too; but Jill had been brought up in wealth, and conventional respectability; and had already weathered one frightful scandal. Why was she punishing herself this way?

In sudden, ambivalent anger and protectiveness, Nora snapped, "Damn him, he should have married you!"

"He wanted to, you know. Only I—didn't. And I'm not sure I want a baby, either."

Again Nora had that distressing suspicion; but this wasn't the time to face it out. That might slam forever a door that should be kept open between them.

"It's rather late to be thinking of that," she said. "Foresight is better than hindsight in such matters. You're young and healthy, and it does happen, you know."

Touched again by a curious compound jealousy, she stirred impatiently; she just didn't want to sit and talk to Jill in this close, intimate way any more.

"Look here, you're going to catch cold, and I'd like to get some sleep—just in case somebody gives me a broken hip or a ruptured appendix for Christmas."

Jill bent to look at the face of Nora's clock. Under the thin nightgown her silhouetted breasts were fuller, the high nipples perceptibly lifting the silk. Nora, looking up at her flushed face, told herself coldly that the pretty breasts, the lovely luster of that skin, were a simple physical result of the flooding of the system with estrogens, the female hormones of pregnancy.

"It's after midnight. Merry Christmas," Jill said, her hand on the doorknob, then turned. "Nora—"

"Yes, my dear?"

"Oh, nothing. Good night." The door closed, and Nora thought, I am a first class bitch. Why the devil didn't I let her stay in here and talk, ask her to sleep in here with me if she's lonely? Why keep the poor kid at arm's length this way?

...Hell, I must be coming unglued. Pammy liked to play kissing games, so I accuse Jill of God-knows-what. What's wrong with me anyhow?

In the dark she smiled without amusement.

You know what's wrong with you. You know what you need.

There is nothing like it—the loneliness of a woman's body. Separation can be accepted with the mind; for the lonely body there is nothing. Empty arms. Breasts that hurt, longing for a touch. Thighs that ache to be parted. And—shame because this hunger can be more imperative than real love.

Kit, Kit, she whispered, burrowing her hot face in the pillow, pressing her body into the cold sheets until the tautness was a crucifixion, Kit, Kit, Kit…

Kit… or anyone. Anyone just now. Anyone…

She forced herself to stand up, to walk to the bathroom and slap her face, hard, with a washcloth wet with cold water, until the tight breathing relaxed in shivering sighs

…I wish I could cry. If I walked into my own office as a patient, I'd tell myself to have a good cry…

Instead she stepped under the shower and made herself stand, enduring the icy needles, for minutes. When she got out she was blue with cold; she rubbed herself harshly, thinking with vicious satisfaction that now she was too busy shivering to have room for any other physical satisfaction. She pulled the bedclothes to her chin, feeling the warmth seep into her chilled body.

At least this was over. Jill was going back with her, but there would be no more of this forced isolation and intimacy. She wouldn't have spare energy for morbid notions. And Kit—but she shut off that thought, sternly. Better not to think of Kit at all. Not tonight.

CHAPTER 6

When she got back to Albany, she found that during her absence Kit had been transferred to a ward, and for the first time since he had re-entered the hospital, he was sitting up.

He was in high spirits, but there were lines around his mouth and eyes, and Nora found herself condemning his doctor. He isn't ready for a ward yet, she thought; but when she bent to kiss him goodbye, she looked quickly around at the other wives taking leave of their men, and thought; yes, it's better. It was better for Kit not to be alone through the long days and nights.

It gave her courage to touch again on an old sore point between them. "Kit," she said, holding his hand and speaking softly, "now that my office is ready and I'll be back in harness—I may not be able to come here regularly. There's at least a chance—if they knew I was on the medical staff at St. Margaret's—that they'd let me come and see you outside regular visiting hours."

The point of flame burned up in his fierce eyes.

“I don't think that would be much of an idea. No, Nora. No special privileges."

She looked around the ward resentfully. "Other women have nothing to do but make themselves pretty for visiting hours!"

"Oh, I don't think you're as unique as all that. There are other men here with working wives."

"With regular hours! I never know when I may be called out!"

"Well, you can quit if you want to," he said irritably, "we're not that hard up for money."

"With a shortage of doctors? Oh, Kit, are we going to quarrel about that?"

"Darling—" Kit reached up and drew her head down to him again. His kiss bruised her mouth and when he let her go they were both shaking. Kit looked grim. "See? I think it's better if we have to—see each other with other people around, for a while, Nora."

He was right, of course. It was torment to exchange that strained kiss in sight of the whole ward, but it was better for Kit—better even for herself—than the momentary, furtive fumbling for a little more, on the rare moments when they were unobserved.

Later, in her car, she let her mind sift the past months. They had never known the easy sharing of good times and bad, the jokes and domestic habits that weld lovers into man and wife. And then another thought probed its way in; if we weren't tied together legally by marriage, could either of us live through this? Was that why Kit hadn't wanted to wait?

Deliberately, she turned the leaf of her mind and let Kit fall astern. Her new office was a good address on a quiet street; she parked the car, looking up at the neat doorplate;

LEONORA CAINE, M.D.

VICTOR DEMORINO: OBS. & GYN.

It was gallant of Vic—to have given her name the top spot. The stairs were quiet, muffled with new black rubber treads; the waiting room they shared had been painted in fresh pastels and there were prints, flowers and birds, on the walls. Inside her private office someone was humming; then a small curvy girl, in close-fitting white nylon uniform, came to the door.

"Why—Dr. Caine," she said, her bright lips curving in a smile, "Do you know you have four appointments booked already?"

"Not today, I hope?"

"No, Vic said you wouldn't be in till tomorrow."

"Oh, it's Vic already?" Nora teased, as they went into the shiny new office. "Did you have a nice Christmas?"

"Grand." Ramona Barbieri crossed the room and opened the door to the examination room, with her quick swinging walk; the walk of a sexy movie star.

It was always a low-keyed irritation to Nora. Phony. But Ramona was unusually capable and efficient, and few trained nurses were available for office work; they could make more money in hospitals. So she said, "You have everything looking very nice in here, Ramona."

"Nora, is that you?" The door across the waiting room opened and closed and Dr. Demorino came in; a stocky man about Nora's age, with deep-set dark eyes and a small well-trimmed mustache. He came and shook Nora's hand. "Ready to get back to the grind?"

"If you think I've had anything else, you should have been in Mayfield and Fairfax with me. Keeping busy, Vic?"

"Keeping the birth rate up," Vic said cheerfully. He was an immensely successful and popular obstetrician who could have been rich if he put his mind to it; but he preferred to spend a good deal of his time on poorly paid work in the Italian slum quarter.

"Take a peek in the waiting room, Ramona."

He followed the girl with his eyes, and it seemed to Nora that the provocative walk was just a little more wriggling and hip-swaying than usual. Sexy bitch.

"You found a good nurse, Nora. Barbieri's a divine doll."

"She's very efficient." Nora herself had never thought Ramona particularly pretty.

"Decorative, too. Of course it could be contrast. After the daily parade of the pregnant, in smocks and sacks and bags, it's restful just to look at a nice shapely tummy."

As she went out, she caught a glimpse, through the open door, into Vic's office. Ramona was bending over an opened file drawer; Vic, passing, gave her a smart spank on her plump backside. She jumped and giggled and rapped out "Cattivo!" And Nora went down the stairs.

It's just fun with Vic. He's just a big overgrown kid. Anyway he won't get much charge out of Ramona. She's been living with one woman after another, ever since I've known her. And now she's settled down with Margaret Sheppard. But I might have guessed that she and Vic would get a kick out of being able to talk paisan with each other.

She got into her car, sighing at the thought of her empty apartment with only a cat—Gerda left at three—and then warmth stole over her, at the realization that the place wouldn't be empty, after all. Jill would be there.

* * *

Jill was curled up on the divan, at the center of a pile of thick-looking books, but she let the one on her lap fall shut as Nora came in. In a fuzzy pink sweater, her pleated skirt tucked up over bare round knees, she looked like a tousled pixie.

"How is Kit?"

"Fine. He sent you his love." As a matter of fact, Kit had said with an outrageous wink, "Give that sexy brunette a kiss for me."

She went through into the kitchen, calling, "Come and set the table while I dish up supper. Gerda's a genius at these delayed-action meals—she always manages to leave everything all ready, yet it never tastes warmed-over, no matter what time I get in."

Nora had pushed away her dessert plate and poured a second cup of coffee before she asked "What did you do today?"

"Registered at Loudon College, and told the Dean I'd take that lab job. I'm taking Parasitology and Vertebrate Embryology, and I supervise two freshman lab sessions."

Nora started to say, if you're pregnant it doesn't make sense to take a teaching job, does it? Jill simply was not facing facts. Then she gave an interior shrug. Jill hadn't asked her advice and hadn't taken it when she gave it. And she might not be pregnant after all. "Well, it sounds interesting. We'll stack the dishes for Gerda."

She spent the evening working on her tax records. Jill buried in a book behind her. When at last she put them away, Jill raised her head. "Do you have any ink? My pen's dry."

"Help yourself." Nora pulled her arm away as Jill came and filled her pen, and suddenly the night in Fairfax came back to her, so that she had to hold herself by force from touching the pink sweater sleeve.

The silver cylinder disappeared into the dark fluid; Jill's dainty fingers manipulated the plunger fastidiously. Two rings glinted in the light; a small gold signet and a silver ring with a pair of tiny opals. Jill withdrew the point and capped it.

"I'm sleepy. I think I'll go to bed early, Nora."

"The phone rings in the night sometimes. I hope it won't bother you."

"It won't. Good night."

Jill went into the bedroom and Nora sat stone-still, stiff with the realization that whatever it was, it was still there. Then she rose and went into the kitchen, finding release in slamming cups. A small plate skittered into her hands and went crashing into the sink, and Jill, in the other room, gave a startled cry.

"It's nothing, I broke a plate," Nora called, but her voice caught. She gathered up the broken pieces with shaking hands. I'm not that sort of freak! I'm not a lesbian! I'm not!

The bedroom was empty. Some of Jill's things lay on the dresser; a jar of cream, a comb and brush. I walked into this, Nora thought; it's too late to get her out of here, what could I say? Jill had dropped her underthings; Nora found her eyes lingering on the small silk panties. She jerked open the closet door and undressed quickly, putting a robe on over her pajamas. She said savagely, half aloud, "I must be going out of my mind!" and sat down to unpin her hair.

Jill, pink and warm in a quilted bathrobe, came out of the shower. She stood behind Nora and took up one braid. "Let me do that, won't you? Or are you one of those people who can't stand having anyone fuss with their hair?"

"I don't mind." But she did. Jill's hands were faintly damp, smelling of soap and powder like a bathed baby. Nora shut her eyes, sensuously aware of the brush stroking along her hair; then sat straight and seized it herself, rasping it hard like a currycomb. "Here, you ridiculous child, give me that, you'll put me to sleep—stroking me like a cat!"

As if the word had been a magical summons the big Siamese materialized, a puff of grayness like smoke, just an ectoplasmic nothing, wafting around the glass door and poking his whiskers experimentally at the folds of Jill's robe. Then he jumped up beside her, purring.

"Down, down, Archy. Off the bed," said Nora severely. Jill petted the cat's ears.

"He's a beauty. Where did you get him?"

"My office nurse—Ramona—keeps cats." Nora stopped short. The danger subject. Ramona and Margaret, right under her eyes, all these years. She had known what they were, and had pushed it out of her mind without even a normal amount of curiosity. Too casual. Too much—not exactly tolerance; too much eager acceptance.

"You were saying—?"

Nora had lost the thread of her thought. "Oh, yes. I had on a new knit blouse, and Archy caught his claws in it, and refused to let go. He had it raveled to ribbons before I could pry him loose. Love at first sight." She listened to Archy's booming purr. He had made a soft nest for himself on Jill's lap.

"He says it's all right, Jill, I can keep you too, I don't have to put you back out in the alley."

She turned back to the dresser. She had carried in the small stack of personal mail, and now she tore it open piece by piece; delayed Christmas cards, a bill or two, advertisements. Jill sat with her knees drawn up, idly petting the cat and chattering.

"The lab work ought to be fun, but it probably won't. Most of those girls are just in the course because its required. I wonder if I can make them see that a microscope is exciting?"

Nora frowned in brief puzzlement at one letterhead; Pearson Associates, Laboratory Testing and Diagnosis. Christmas card? Calendar? She was halfway down the mimeographed form, filled out in green ink, before she knew what she was reading:

Type: Friedman

Date: Nov. 30, 1961

Specimen subject: Bristol, Mrs J

Referred by: Leonora Caine, MD

Result: positive for pregnancy.

She jerked up her head. So Mack had won his gamble. "Here, Jill," she said curtly, "this is yours. I guess they got tired of waiting for me to call for it."

She tossed the green slip into Jill's lap. Jill said "What?" and read it through, her face losing color.

"Well, that's that," she said at last. Then, crumpling it up in an angry fist, she exploded, "At least Mack got away first! Now he needn't know!"

"Jill—it's none of my business—do you honestly think you're being fair to Mack? He's a good man, and he loves you. If you wanted to break off with him, you could have done it cleanly, before he left."

Jill shook her head, her face twisting. "It's not—I told you, I don't want to wreck it for him—I don't want him to feel that he has to marry me."

"Well, there's still time for him to fly home from Lima and marry you."

"No! Oh, no!" Jill jumped up, her face white. "Nora, you can't tell him! You know he wouldn't go back to the expedition! Please, please, promise you won't!"

Why was Jill punishing herself this way? Suddenly, the suspicion that had never left her flared up; she caught Jill's shoulder, not gently: "Or were you planning on trying some damn fool stunt to force a miscarriage? Answer me," she demanded, "have you been doing something to yourself?"

"I haven't been taking any—any kind of drugs," Jill said tremulously. "Where would I get anything like that? And I've—been around hospitals enough to know that the —the other things women do, hot baths and quinine and that stuff, don't do any good."

"Or any harm," Nora snapped, "though I suppose you've been trying? Well, if it keeps your mind occupied—I knew a girl who spent half her pregnancy winning ski championships in Norway. She had twins. So go ahead and jump off tables if it makes you happy!"

Jill began to protest, but Nora was staring bleakly over her head. "Oh, those things work sometimes. If the woman has a tendency to miscarry anyhow. If she doesn't mind ruining her health, or wrecking her chances of ever carrying a healthy baby to full term afterward."

She was flinging the words bitterly, remembering Les Rannock's words. It's up to you, Nor. You said you'd stick it out if we had a kid. You think I didn't know? To shut them out she swung back to Jill:

"You're not going to do that to Mack, are you? If you do—if you do, you're a worse bitch than I ever thought! Tie him down, hell! Go ahead, make all sorts of excuses for getting rid of his baby!"

"Oh, don't," Jill begged, "I don't want a baby, I don't, but—I only wanted to wait until Mack was sure—until I was sure—until I knew how he'd feel—" she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

Nora's breath caught on the ache in her throat. Blindly she drew the sobbing girl into her arms. A moment Jill resisted the touch, then clung to Nora; and Nora held her, kissing the little downy feathers of hair away from her face.

"I'm a miserable, wretched sadist," she said aloud. "Don't. Jill—sweet—don't. I didn't mean to make you cry."

Sex frustration, latent homosexuality, how damn silly can you get? You're jealous, you damn fool, because she's Mack's wife and going to have Mack's kid, and you've been deviling her, when you promised to take care of her.

She lifted Jill to her feet, took the robe from her, and tucked her in bed tenderly; then lay down beside her, taking Jill in her arms. Jill was still crying a little. The sound and feel of the convulsive sobs echoed something which Nora had never been able to release in herself.

She thought at last that Jill was asleep. They were lying close, breast against breast, Jill heavy on her arm. Jill's pajama shirt had fallen open and Nora's hand rested on her smooth bare back.

Jill murmured, snuggling closer. Nora smelled the indefinable scent of her hair, the cherry-blossom fragrance of her skin. Her bare feet were touching Nora's ankles. No wonder Mack adores her...

With infinite caution, compelled by something she could not resist, Nora loosened the buttons of her own pajama jacket so that their bare breasts touched. Her hand on Jill's silky back moved down, pressing the sleeping girl close.

And that shocked her wide awake again. Good God have I come that low—getting my kicks by pawing a girl when she's asleep? What would Jill think if she was awake enough to know what was going on?

She whispered "Asleep, darling?"

Jill sighed drowsily and nuzzled her head into Nora's bare neck. "Mrnmmm."

Nora kissed the tip of her ear and settled Jill down on her arm. Already drifting into sleep, she knew what she would deny fiercely when she woke; they had started something which could have only one end. It was only a matter of time.

CHAPTER 7

Nora had been kept all morning by one crisis after another, and by the time she got downstairs, dinner had long been cleared away in the staff dining room. As she carried a tray between rows of empty tables, she saw Vic Demorino, still in the glareless green jacket of the operating room.

"Hello, Vic. I didn't know you were in."

He did not rise, only nodded tiredly as she set her tray down. "I'm having a run like a bank in a market crash. The drugstores must be clean out of castor oil. Every unprintable pregnant female in Albany, Troy and Schenectady must have decided to give birth. The astrology magazines must have told them it's a lucky day. Do you know how many little squallers I've delivered since two AM? Go on, make a guess!"

"Three?"

"Oh, hell, girl, I delivered three before I got breakfast, including one classic breech. Seven's the score so far, and another coming on. Sister Gabrielle was parking them in the elevator. The fifth and sixth came on almost simultaneously, and DiLuccio was having a bad time, so Quentin took over the sixth for me, and by the time I got through, went to check on the little details, Mrs. Reski was out of the ether already and giving me blue flaming hell. No young snip of a girl doctor was going to learn how—get that, learn how, and Barbara Quentin's been on maternity for three years—on her! And the Reski female could have dropped her kid in a potato patch."

Nora found herself laughing. "Poor Barbara. But we get used to that. You do look beat."

"The original beatnik. Can I cadge a cigarette?" He indicated his pocketless operating trousers. "I've got another gal working upstairs, but she's a primapara and thank God, she won't need me for a couple of hours." He took a deep pull at the cigarette. "You have it soft. Your patients make appointments before they hit the hospital."

This was ritual and she made the expected answer. "You have nine months to get ready for yours."

"I'm going to grab a nap in the doctor's lounge. Will you tell Ramona to cancel my appointments, and you see anyone who looks like an emergency?"

"Sure."

"I ought to be finished with the population explosion by four. Dinner?"

"We had that all out last fall, Vic," she said, smiling.

"I don't take no for an answer that easy. You're eating dinner with me now. Does it make that much difference if I'm wearing a tie and picking up the check?"

"Not if it stopped there. It wouldn't, Vic."

"Damn right." He reached for her hand. "We went good together, didn't we?"

"Very. That was a long time ago, though."

"We still could, Nora."

She said it carefully, for this man was a friend she valued. "You're forgetting, Vic. Things have changed. I'm married."

"Don't you forget it yourself?"

"I'd rather not discuss that. Do you mind?"

"Yes, I do. Pity is a damnably poor foundation for faithfulness in marriage," he said. She sat very straight, the Spartan who has had and must conceal his death-wound. He put his elbows on the table, not smiling.

"Truth hurts, doesn't it? So you're married. What good has it done you? This year has taken it out of you, you know. You look like hell. You're a woman, and you need loving—as who should know better than I?"

"That's a caddish thing to say," said Nora, coloring.

"So I'm a cad. I'm also a doctor, and a friend. The life you're living simply isn't normal."

Nora slammed the table impatiently, shoving back her chair. "Christ! If I can't even eat dinner in peace—"

Vic caught her wrist. "Sit still. See?" he said, without heat, "you can't live this way, your nerves won't take it."

Why should I be angry with Vic, she wondered. He's only saying what I've been thinking. But she was angry.

"What is this, Vic? Offering to sleep with me as a favor to a nervous wreck? Dr. Demorino's old reliable prescription for frazzled females? Vic, if I were a man I'd smash your teeth down your throat."

He chortled. "If you were a man and I made you that kind of proposition, I'd expect you to!"

Her anger dissolved and she laughed. "Thanks, Vic. But—no thanks."

"Now look. Suppose the shoe were on the other foot. Suppose you were in the hospital a year, and your husband going through all that—"

"It's not the same and you know it. For God's sake, you make me feel as if I were going around like a bitch in heat!"

"Oh, come—" but the drone of the paging system cut him off. "Sister Amy, wanted in Ward Fi-yuv. Doc-tor Demorino, wan-ted in Delivery Room. Sis-ter Amy—"

He scowled, dumping his cigarette. "Well, here we go again. I'd hoped Pizzetti would take another hour—"

"Let Quentin handle it. That's what she's for."

Vic shook his head wearily. "Can't. I don't think the Pizzetti kid speaks more than twenty words of English, and it's her first baby. I kind of promised I'd show up and hold her hand." He put his own hand momentarily on Nora's shoulder. "See you later, girl."

She sat watching him, poking idly at her congealed lunch. For the first time she was brought smash against a new fact; after sixteen years of total freedom, the habits and attitudes of a married woman are not acquired overnight.

She could still feel, like a speck of heat, Vic's firm hand on her shoulder; it brought back, with a physical vividness that made her gasp, the memory of his hot mouth; the feel of his thick-set hairy body against hers. She cursed, humiliated, under her breath, but the memory went on; an inexorable playback on some mental recorder whose cutoff switch was out of order. That first, perfect time in her apartment, in broad daylight...

* * *

She had come to Albany four years ago, at the end of her residency in a large Chicago hospital. Vic sent all his patients to St. Margaret's; he and Nora ran across each other frequently. It seemed natural to date him—the snatched, time-pressed casual dates of overworked people who can't call their lives their own; coffee in the lounge, spaghetti in an Italian restaurant owned by an uncle of Vic's, who gave them special food and wine and a flow of talk not too subtly aimed at urging Vic to settle down. But he was still a colleague, a casual friend.

Things had changed suddenly. One cool spring day he had suggested a game of tennis and driven her to the park. Nora, who had only changed her shoes for canvas-soled sneakers, was startled to see him in shorts and an armless singlet. Dressed, he simply looked thick-set; stripped, he was strong and smoothly tanned, with the muscles of an acrobat, legs like shafts of bronze covered with fine, soft reddish down.

Nora, on her mettle with his first serve, played her best, but his every move had an almost professional grace. When he had won two sets out of three, she took him back to the apartment for a drink—already half knowing what would happen. Dressed again in slacks and shirt, he looked like the man she knew—grave and stern, with kind eyes and good hands—but behind the mask Nora still saw the muscular athlete's body, the boyish grace with which he ran and dodged across the court.

Confused under his eyes, she put up her hands to her still-disheveled hair; but Vic moved swiftly to her side, put down his glass and held out his arms. His arms were crushingly strong and his mouth vigorous. Then he held her at arm's length, and she heard his roughened breathing.

"Girl, all day long I watch women taking their clothes on and off, and it doesn't do a damn thing to me. You take down your hair—" he pulled out a pin, sending the copper weight of it tumbling—"and unbutton your blouse button and I could knock you over the head and rape you."

She leaned forward deliberately and kissed him. She said clearly, "Don't bother knocking me over the head."

The sun in the bedroom came in bright and clear green through the leaves outside the window. Vic stood in the sunlight, unaffectedly flexing his arms as he cast aside his clothes. He was unashamed of his strong bronzed nakedness, vigorous and virile; his hot eyes made her a little shy, and when she hesitated, he sprang at her, laughing, pretending a Tarzan growl, and she felt her brief panties tear away; she laughed breathlessly and sank under his weight. Though she was taller than he, she felt fragile in his muscular arms.

It was as wholesome as sunlight—that fierce mating in the glow of day, Vic's hearty strength bearing down on her until she gasped and cried out with the delight of it; then stronger and stronger, the rhythm of elemental need beating up in them both, until a toppling crest of violence swept away all awareness of time or place, daylight or dark. She heard herself cry out without shame or reserve.

Afterward, lying cool and relaxed in the strong circle of his arms, she had felt the rough touch of his mouth and heard him say softly, "So there's a hell of a lot of woman going to waste under that marble front. I thought so. We won't let it go to waste—will we, girl?"

They hadn't. Nora knew now—sitting in the deserted hospital cafeteria—that if things had gone on much longer, she and Vic would have drifted into marriage; not love—it never entered her mind, to connect romantic passion with Vic Demorino—but still, a good marriage, born of shared work, compatible interests, and the high flare of intense sexual attraction.

And then a thin, insolent man on crutches, with the flaming eyes of a caged falcon, had crossed words like swords; she had seen Vic, briefly, at his dictatorial worst, and Kit's high-tension-wire of veiled sensuality had made Vic's hearty lust seem schoolboyish. Vic had not taken her marriage seriously at first, then had been outraged, almost pitying. She had not tried to make him understand...

She realized, with a start, that she was due at her office in ten minutes. She could just about make it.

She sent Ramona home when the last patient had gone, but lingered herself; and she did not pretend surprise when Vic came in.

"Still here, Nora?"

"Come in, Vic. I saw Mrs. Kerraday for you. She's convinced she's going to have twins or a two-headed freak, and wants an X-ray."

"Anyone who says twins to me for at least six weeks gets murdered," he groaned. "Kerraday, Kerraday—let me think—oh, her. If she's pregnant with twins, they only have one heart between 'em."

He sank wearily in the padded chair. "I could go to sleep right here. They wheeled another one upstairs just as I finished up with Pizzetti—emergency Caesarean. Premature twins. Two pounds, odd, apiece. I thought we'd lose one of them, but they're still breathing." He chuckled, his eyes blinking open. "Hey, you know what? That leaves me with no patient expecting to deliver for—" he considered briefly, then rapped his knuckles on the wooden desk-top, "two weeks. Give me a lift home, Nora? My car's in the shop."

He settled into the car cushions a few minutes later. "God, I am tired. Consider the invitation this afternoon withdrawn. I need sleep—and alone, thanks. Kinsey or somebody ought to write a report on the sex life of the overworked obstetrician."

She laughed. "Do you really think it would even fill up a pamphlet?"

She braked at his apartment house, and he turned before getting out. "Want a drink or something?" he asked suggestively.

Nora hesitated, knowing she walked along a knife-edge which would alter her future. But before she managed to speak he reached for his bag.

"Not on an empty stomach, huh? You might lose control and rape me, and I'm too tired to fight you off. Okay, Nora." He gave her shoulder a quick pat as he got out. "You won't have any more trouble from this quarter. I hope Ellersen deserves what he's getting. If he doesn't, damn it, he'll have a fist fight on his hands." He went quickly up the steps without looking back, and Nora was not sure whether she looked after him with relief-or regret.

* * *

Her own apartment was dark and empty and a little too hot. Nora said "Jill?" switched on the light and went startled, from room to room. The cat mewed in the kitchen, and Nora went and picked him up.

Oh come, she told herself, this is ridiculous, Jill doesn't have to tell you when she's going out.

She lighted the oven, made a salad, carefully laid a single place; but though she was hungry after her sketchy lunch, she found she had no appetite.

Careless for once of the polished and waxed floor, she handed a generous morsel of ham down to Archy, watching him bat it back and forth with languid grace,

"Are you frustrated, Archy? Do you wish you could go out tom-catting in alleys?" she asked aloud. You old maid. Talking to a cat.

The silence was oppressive, and she found herself turning over in her mind words that had to be said between herself and Jill.

Jill, about the other night…

Jill, we were both upset, I acted like an idiot…

Jill, you know perfectly well I'm no lesbian…

The word had finally escaped her. Lesbian. Was Pammy's father right after all? Am I the sort of person who goes around corrupting little girls?

The hall door banged; Jill came through to the kitchen, wind-flushed, arms full of packages. "Is there some coffee left? Oh, good." She got herself a cup.

"Why didn't you have supper before you left, Jill? Everything was all ready. Next time I'm late, do have a proper meal, I might be out all night."

"I wasn't hungry." Jill paused, cup in mid-air. "And if you tell me I'm eating for two, I'll throw my cup at you."

Later in the bedroom she watched Jill unwrap her packages. "I thought you didn't wear brassieres," she said idly.

"I don't, but now I think I should."

"What's this? Lace panties?"

Jill spread them on the bed. "Sinful britches."

“Wha-at?"

"Family joke. One Christmas—I was about fifteen—Pam gave me a set of black lace underwear, very flimsy and naughty-looking. Mama said it was in very poor taste for young girls, but I think Pam meant it as a joke. She was always like that. You know."

Nora positively had to remind herself that Jill could not read her mind.

"Great-aunt Harriet was shocked. Not just disapproving Mama, but—oh, horrified, as if—as if—"

"As if she expected you to do a Gypsy Rose Lee in them?”

“I guess. Jackie asked why it was indecent if nobody ever saw it. After all, nobody sees your underwear, and Jackie said black lace was just the same as flannel bloomers." Jill giggled again, mimicking a thin, rasping old voice. "A nice young girl who wears fantastical underclothing is always looking for an excuse to display it. Unbecoming undergarments are the surest guarantee of modesty."

"Oh, no, Jill!"

"Oh, yes, Nor! So every time I wore them, Pammy asked if I could be good in my sinful britches."

"Jill, where is Pammy living now?"

Jill dropped the "sinful britches," startled. "Why, Nora, Pammy's dead. Didn't you know?"

"Oh, no, Jill, I never heard anything. What—how—"

"She died in childbirth. She married Ken Rainsbury and she lost the baby and she died."

"No, I never knew. I'm so sorry!" She had thought of Pamela living and warm, surrounded by hearty children. It had seemed necessary to think of her that way. She was too shocked and distressed to speak.

After her bath, toweling her spare body, she found herself thinking again, with muted grief and tenderness, of Pammy. Her father had feared a lesbian might corrupt his daughter. Yet it was normal married life that had destroyed Pam—

That is absolutely the most neurotic… if a patient said that, I'd tell her to run, not walk, to a psychiatrist!

Jill was buffing her nails before the mirror. She said, without looking up, "Nora, I—I wrote Mack today and told him about the baby."

"Good," Nora said affirmatively, and realizing this meant surrender, she did not dwell on the point.

"The baby ought to be born early in August. Will you—make an appointment with Dr. Demorino for me?"

"Oh, Jill, of course!" Nora held out her arms and they hugged each other.

"Nora, I—last night I behaved like a spoiled brat."

Nora was breathless at the complete capitulation in this. They clung together; Jill smiled up at her shakily.

"How long will it be before I start to—to get big?"

"Oh, there won't be much gross change before March. Maybe April. Let me see—" she put her hands around the slender waist. Her heart was pounding. Then, without a word, she unfastened the robe at the throat and slipped her hand into the neck of Jill's nightgown, cradling the small breast in her hand. It felt very warm.

Jill laughed nervously. "See? I do need a brassiere now, don't I?" Suddenly she flung her arms around Nora again, with such violence that Nora fell back on the bed. Nora pulled Jill down to her.

"Jill—Jill, I've been hateful, for weeks I've been pretending—"

Jill stopped the murmured words by kissing her. They lay close together for minutes, holding each other; then Jill, her hands shaking, untied the belt of Nora's robe and flung it toward the foot of the bed.

Nora had not moved. Jill came back to her mouth, and their lips fastened and fused together. Her hands, small and soft and gentle, moved caressingly down Nora's shoulders. Nora heard herself gasp aloud with an almost painful delight, as Jill shyly repeated her own gesture; cupping her hand around Nora's breast. She caught Jill close, pulling the girl down heavily across her, feeling the sudden, sweet, savage ache all through her body.

Their feet were still tangled in Nora's robe. Nora said in a roughened voice, "Wait, darling," and reached to snap out the light. With her other hand she swept down and pulled away the tangled clothes, flinging them off on the floor. Then with impatient fingers she jerked off the coat of her pajamas and threw it after them.

The room was flooded with the pale, lustrous light of the moonlight outside, reflected from snow. Nora heard Jill make a strange little sound, halfway between a sigh and a sob. Then Jill’s bare arms closed around her, and the ache and tension of anticipation suddenly melted and flowed. She went limp all over with the anguish and delight of surrender.

Her hands, instinctively seeking softnesses, seemed to have a life of their own. She pressed Jill's head to her breast, feeling the soft lips close over the hardening nipple with strangely pleasant pain. And then she lost track of separate sensations, conscious only of softness, of sweetness, of wave after wave of spreading small shivers that carried her along on their crest.

Through it all she was conscious of immense surprise, of growing tenderness like a counterbass chord pattern to the singing in her nerves. As the diffuse patterns swept to their summit, she heard her own cry, hardly more than a whisper, like a final, explosive cadence; then silence.

It was a long time before either of them moved again. At last Nora turned and reached across Jill for a cigarette. She lay on her back, smoking, the confusion of thought and feeling slowly clearing. But the tenderness, and the surprise remained.

She had always clung, down deep, to a half-formed notion that no woman could possibly give another woman genuine sexual satisfaction. In spite of Kinsey, she had believed the alleged pleasure felt by homosexuals to be a childish delight in kisses, a schoolgirlish shivering because they had never known real sex. But this had been real enough. She felt almost amused at the collapse of the illusion, but also troubled, and humiliated.

Jill was lying face down, her nightgown crumpled beneath her. Nora put out her cigarette and bent to kiss the bare shoulder.

"Aren't you cold, darling?" She pulled up the blanket; then, trembling, circled the narrow waist with her hands. "Jill, what on earth have we been doing?"

"I don't know, but whatever it is, I'm in favor of it. Why aren't men—" she hid her face against Nora's bare breast, "why aren't men this—comfy?"

Nora was glad the girl could not see her burning face. "Men aren't especially emotional, I guess. Or if they are, it doesn't express itself physically. In short, my darling—" she broke off, then went on steadily, "men have an unconquerable itch to get it inside, and when they've done that, whatever their good intentions, that's that. Erotic play is something we decadent females invented because we didn't like being dragged by the hair to the cave."

She was betraying herself, she knew—betraying men she had known who were gentler, more emotional than she was herself. But she went on, using the words as whips to lash herself: "So I fail to see why it should be socially or morally taboo for women to enjoy it together; since men neither need nor want it."

There was a short, stricken silence. Jill lay so still Nora could hardly hear her breathing. Nora said, "And speaking of social and moral taboo, pet, one of us had better go and finish the night in that other bed. Or at least muss it up a little."

Jill put up her face to be kissed. "Nora. Are you— ashamed of this? Listen, this was my fault, don't think I don't realize—"

"I wasn't blaming—"

"If you're ashamed, or anything, I'll never forgive myself. I thought we both wanted it."

"I did," Nora said very quietly. "Surely you could tell." The clock ticked in the silence and a little ruffle of wind flung a branch against the window. "Jill, may I ask you—a terribly personal question?"

"Ask me anything you want to."

But with this license Nora could not frame her question. She had been thinking of Pammy; but at last she asked "Were you and Mack—physically compatible?"

"If you mean did I enjoy going to bed with him, the answer is yes, doctor. At least after the first couple of times." Jill sat up abruptly, pulling the fallen robe around her bare shoulders.

"Where are you going?"

"Back to my own bed" she snapped haughtily, "can't forget all the social and moral taboos, can we?"

Ill at ease, Nora switched on the light. Tears were raining down Jill's cheeks, and the thin arms were shaking as she fumbled with the buttons.

Nora went after Jill, picked her up like a child and carried her back to bed. She climbed in beside her and took the girl in her arms, kissing the wet eyes and the little feathers of hair at the temples.

The only thing that mattered in the world was to banish the shadows from those wet gray eyes.

CHAPTER 8

Nora sat in her office, thinking vaguely about the patient she had just seen, then discarding the thought, deliberately, until the next day.

She had a curiously compartmented mind. A doctor cannot afford to be preoccupied with personal problems; and only by this rigid division of her life had she managed to keep the disaster of her first marriage, and now the tension of her second, from affecting her work.

She had managed likewise to keep her feelings for Jill in an air-tight, light-proof portion of her mind. But in these transitory moments, crossing the bridge that separated doctor from woman, she found herself surveying both with sharp perspective.

She had dismissed Pammy as childish nonsense. She had expected to dismiss this business with Jill as loneliness and sexual starvation. She had expected to say to herself; well, now you know. Most women were curious about lesbian practices, and, whether they would admit it or not, wanted to experiment. Jill had taken her off guard, at a low point of physical need.

She knew the clinical phrases. Frustration. Substitute satisfaction. Mutual masturbation. The sort of thing that flares up on board ship or in girls' schools. A faute de mieux.

But she found she could not dismiss it so easily. Next morning, looking into Jill's flushed face, she had smiled and kissed her reassuringly; and that night when Jill held out her arms, she had gone to them as if compelled.

Wearily, Nora laid her face on the desk, almost grateful for the consultation that had held her here—away from Kit—this afternoon.

Ramona came to the office door, and Nora looked up at her with newly perceptive eyes. "Are we through?"

"Just about—no, someone's on the stairs."

Nora went to the hall door and looked out, then smiled-it was Jill, her small white cap jaunty on her curls.

"Am I butting in, Nora?"

"No, I'm through for the day." There was a smudge on Jill's bright face and her curls were badly in need of a comb, and Nora felt an unruly lift in her voice as she said, "Let's hurry up and get out of here before somebody comes along. Ramona, can we give you a lift home? We might be able to catch Margaret at the library—I've been wanting Jill to meet her." She added, to Jill, "It's time you met a few of my friends."

As they pulled up before the library, they saw a tall, slender girl coming down the steps. "Success. We did catch her," said Nora.

The girl saw them, waved, and came hurrying toward the car. She was tall, with a wide and flexible mouth and pale-green eyes behind thick glasses. Light hair, carelessly brushed, swung loose around her coat collar, and her hands, large and heavy-knuckled, had the librarian's occupational grime embedded in the knuckles; yet the effect was not shabbiness but careless grace. She got in beside Ramona.

"This is Jill," Nora said, "she's living with me now. Jill, Margaret Sheppard."

"It's nice to know you." Margaret's voice was huskily sweet. She leaned forward as Nora started the car; "Jill— have you any name besides Jill?"

Nora said quickly, not giving Jill the chance, "She's Mrs. Roger MacLellan, my—stepbrother's wife. Mack's in Peru now with an archaeological expedition." She brought the car to a stop before an enormous frowsy house which had once been a mansion. Now it bore the painted sign LENOX APARTMENTS.

Ramona got out and stood on the sidewalk. "Blossom and Melinda have had their kittens, Nora," she said. In the office it was always, correctly, Dr. Caine. "Won't you come up and have a peek?"

Nora looked questioningly at Jill.

“Love to."

The apartment was up two flights of stairs that smelled of floor-sweep and, faintly, of mice; but the rooms were freshly painted and tastefully furnished. On the sofa a package of laundry was spilling blouses and pressed white uniforms from torn brown paper. Margaret frowned and began to gather it up.

Ramona opened a door leading to a glassed-in porch, empty except for a narrow single bed covered with a faded blanket. Two cats were curled on the blanket; Ramona bent over them scooping up a kitten in each hand. The cats purred, but did not protest. Ramona turned, dangling the kittens between loosely competent fingers. She was rather like a kitten herself with her triangular face and furry eyebrows.

"We'll make money on this batch. They have perfect points. But then, we've never had one left on our hands."

Margaret, hunched over to look into a mirror too low for her, was running a comb through her untidy hair. "No—only in our clean laundry and all over the beds," she said dryly, pointing with her comb at the burst package.

"May I hold one?" Jill asked. Ramona put a kitten into her outstretched palm and Jill snuggled the fragile, fluff-coated bones against her sweater. Margaret took Nora's hat and gloves. "Let me put these up. Nothing's really safe with the cats around."

Ramona was fiddling with a record player. Dance music, smooth and bright, filled the room.

"Jill, do you like Dave Brubeck?"

"Who's he?" Jill asked blankly, and Ramona stared.

"You don't like music?" She held up the record envelope.

"Not jazz, especially."

Ramona sniffed, a very tiny sniff. "Then you and Marg ought to get along. She is strictly square and longhair. She even likes opera!"

"If you're going to fight that one out again," Nora said, putting down an empty record sleeve, "let me pick out a neutral corner."

Jill said shyly, "With a name like Barbieri, I'd think you'd be a real opera fan."

"Well, I'm not," replied Ramona shortly.

Margaret said with a crooked smile "Careful, Jill, you've hit her sorest spot. She's afraid someone will call it low taste. She won't admit she knows Toscanini from Rocky Marciano. Come and see my records."

Jill was already kneeling beside Margaret before the record cabinet, "Oh, I see you have the new TURANDOT. Is it better than the old Cetra set?"

Ramona laughed and made an 'I give up' gesture at Nora. "Well, Marg is in her element. You come along and see my kittens."

The porch was empty except for the cats' boxes and sandboxes; two half-grown kittens scuffling softly over a length of ribbon, the two queens suckling their litters. Nora looked down at the tangled, tumbling balls of fur, listening with half an ear as Ramona analyzed their perfection of points and eye color. She was not an animal lover, nor—usually—sentimental about baby creatures. But the curious, aloof maternity of the queens, the blind helplessness of the kittens, struck some new, deep-down emotion she could not reach.

Jill and Margaret came out after a while. While Jill crooned over the kittens, Nora asked, "How is Skippy, Marg?"

"I saw him at Christmas. He seems healthy and happy." Margaret looked out the window. "It's going to drag on for years. A child custody suit is like a perpetual motion machine. Once you get it started, you can't shut it off again."

Jill asked, "Which cat is the mother of which kittens?" and Ramona laughed.

"I wouldn't know. Cats do the nuttiest things. These two wouldn't even eat from the same dish, but a few weeks before the kittens came, they began snuggling up to each other, and—this is the craziest thing ever—when Blossom started to deliver, Melinda—the one with the dark patches, there—crawled in with her and did likewise, just to keep her company. I lifted her into her own box a dozen times, but she had her mind made up. I had to go to work, and Marg never notices, so when I came home, here they were, five kittens between them, licking them all indiscriminately. And they've made a regular community project of bringing up the babies."

"Communists," Nora said. "Collective nurseries."

"Early Christians," said Margaret.

"Lesbians," said Jill.

Ramona straightened, with a curious sharp look at Jill. Then she laughed. "Exactly; crazy, mixed-up kittens." But there was a silence around the laughter.

Nora picked up a kitten, then put it gently down, and dug in her pocket for a cigarette. "Marg, Ramona, are you doing anything tonight? Jill hasn't been out since we came to Albany. We could go for a drink. I thought—" she crushed out the cigarette, though she had taken only two puffs, "we might take her to Flora's."

Margaret said sharply, "You're not serious."

"I am. I haven't been there for months."

"Why not?" Ramona's dark eyes twinkled. "Don't be a wet blanket, Marg."

Margaret frowned a little at Jill, but finally said, "All right. Why not? You can pick us up at seven."

* * *

Inside their own apartment, Jill turned on Nora angrily. "What possessed you to introduce me as Mrs. MacLellan?"

Nora stared. "What else? In a few weeks you will be very obviously pregnant. I thought it would save embarrassment."

"I'm embarrassed enough, right now! I gave in my name to Dr. Demorino as Mrs. Bristol—to Ramona!"

"I never thought of that," said Nora, startled and angry. What a stupid thing to do! All of a piece, of course, with Jill's self-punishing actions. "I thought you'd feel awkward."

"You sound like my mother," Jill said, cheeks flaming, "Regard for appearances! Lie, cheat, steal, as long as the neighbors don't know!"

"Nonsense." Nora went through into the kitchen. "We'd better get supper, and I've got to check with the answering service. Jill, you're not on the witness stand. For that matter, at common law, Mack's baby has a right to his name—legitimate or not—and you have a right to call yourself his wife."

"Who's talking about rights? That's just the sort of thing I won't do. I haven't any claim on Mack—"

Nora turned away impatiently. "Oh, you're hopeless. All right, you can tell Marg what a liar I am, and set the record straight by confessing all your sins. Why not wear a big scarlet letter while you're at it? Will you set the table please, or do you want to eat out of the sink?"

Jill did not move. She said thinly, "Nora, are you ashamed to introduce me to your friends because I'm going to have a baby and—and not married?"

"For God's sake, stop it," said Nora. Then it dawned on her; Jill had meant it. She was actually fighting back tears. Nora came swiftly and put her hands on the shaking shoulders. "My dear, don't you know me better than that?" But through her dismay, exasperation surged up, so that she felt conflicting impulses—to hug Jill and to shake sense into her.

"But, dear, you're too sensitive. If we want to live in this world, we do have to accept a certain amount of—"

"Hypocrisy."

"Exactly." Nora let her arm drop and began dishing up the chops. "There are more polite words. Look, let's turn it around. After my divorce I lived alone ten years. The world subscribes to the notion that, being legally unmarried, I have no physical, psychological, emotional or spiritual need for sex. If I want to keep on practicing medicine, I have to subscribe too—or make people think I do. Rightly or wrongly, our society is dedicated to the proposition that I couldn't possibly be a tramp and a good competent doctor at the same time. The way it works out is that anyone who wants to leave the paths of so-called virtue shows a little—not hypocrisy—a little decent discretion."

"Decent! I don't think it's indecent for a woman to have lovers, if she wants to. But sneaking around to do it—that's dirty!"

"Well, you're outvoted," said Nora wearily, unfolding her napkin. "Be honest and a martyr, or be a mild hypocrite and do as you damn please. It's your life."

I'm angry, she thought, because Jill's more honest than I am... There was something else she had to say, and she didn't know where to start. "More tea? Jill, by the way—no more cracks about lesbians in front of Marg."

Suddenly she realized; Jill might interpret this like her lie about Jill's marriage; a hint that she was ashamed of the true state of affairs. "But you couldn't know—Marg left her husband and baby to live with Ramona."

"Husband? I thought real lesbians never married."

"Whatever you mean by a real lesbian," Nora said dryly— "Since I've said so much—Frank Sheppard is a heel. He never did a decent thing in his life. When Skip was a month old, Marg packed up and walked out. For a while, she lived here with me."

Nora thought of the weeks when Margaret and Skippy had lived here; the force of her own self-deception now became clear to her. She had thought she was simply doing a down-and-out girl a favor.

"I mean; she kept house for me, before she got the library job. Later she moved in with Ramona." She had watched them with detachment which now seemed wholly false, hiding from herself.

"In another state, Marg could have a divorce for non-support, abusive treatment, what have you. But in this one you need proof of adultery, and no sane woman would mess with Sheppard. Then he dragged it all into court—demanded custody of Skippy, called Marg an unfit mother—it was all bluff, he wouldn't be bothered supporting a child, not him. But then Frank's mother got into the act—she has Skippy now. You've got to say one thing for Ramona," she added with scrupulous fairness, "she stuck to Marg, through all the hell."

The words were self-reproach; she was remembering others. Of course, Margaret, if you ask me, I shall testify that you have always been a good mother and led a quiet and respectable life in my house, and that I know nothing to the contrary. But had Margaret wanted only a character witness?

Had Margaret's refusal to endure a bad marriage been a reproach to Nora's own failure with what might have been a good one with Les Rannock? Margaret, who had been willing to bring up a child alone if need be?

Had she thrown Margaret and Ramona together, fearing to be involved herself?

Impatiently, she rose. "Let's go. It's almost seven."

CHAPTER 9

Jill asked in an undertone, as the car pulled away from the Lenox Apartments, "What sort of place is this—Flora's?"

"It's a bar," Nora said slowly. "Men—aren't admitted."

"One of—those?"

Nora shrugged. "It's respectable. It's about the only place I know where a woman can have a drink alone without being molested by drunks and sailors. Most places, an unescorted woman is treated like a prostitute looking for a pickup."

The streets of the South End were cavernous and dark, between the neon signs brightening every corner; lurid orange, poison-fruit red, electric blue and green. The street-lamps flickered a sickly yellow by contrast.

Nora pulled the car to the curb and, when they got out, locked it. The door, modestly glassed, announced in a small neon voice FLORA'S. Holding the door for Jill, she blinked at the splotched brightness. A juke-box was playing, a little too loud.

Soon they were seated around a table covered with white oilcloth. There were about twenty women, in couples or small groups, at the tables. At one end was a small bar with half a dozen stools. A few of the women were wearing slacks; but in this weather, that was nothing unusual.

Nora leaned over and whispered to Jill, "See? Bet you a dollar to a dishrag you can't tell the gay girls from the others. What would you like to drink?"

Jill shrugged. "Ginger ale, I guess."

"Jill, if you really don't drink, I won't persuade you. But if you ever do, this is both the time and the place."

"Well, if I get drunk, it's your fault, remember. Rum and coke, then."

Ramona made a disapproving, face and, like Nora, ordered Scotch. Margaret smiled. "The usual for me."

"Wet blanket," Ramona muttered.

"If you were smart, you'd stick to beer yourself. You know perfectly well—"

"Listen, I don't need you to tell me—"

"Ease off," said Margaret, "this is a party. Remember?"

Ramona leaned toward Jill. "That's Flora Danbury at the bar. She owns the place." She indicated the tall, very thin woman in a fashionably cut business suit, graying hair touched up with chic blue. Jill smiled:

"She looks more like a Dean of Women."

The woman swivelled suddenly and her sharp eyes raked their table; then she walked with long strides toward them. "Good evening," she said, in a crisp low voice. Her face was deeply lined; her eyes, dark behind thick horn-rims, met Nora's briefly, with cool recognition; then came to rest on Jill.

"You haven't been here before. How old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

"No offense, young woman. But we can't endanger our license by serving to minors."

Jill extended her driver's license, with a demure smile. Flora Danbury barely glanced at it, putting a familiar hand on Jill's shoulder.

"It's all right, kid, I just have to be sure."

Jill glanced at the hand on her shoulder and suddenly giggled. Nora could almost read her thoughts; this was an exciting adventure, to be sitting in a slum bar—a queer joint.

Flora was older than she looked; and the hands, as finely kept as Nora's own, were not young hands. Jill smiled up brightly at Flora, and the hand on her shoulder moved slowly up to rumple Jill's curly hair before she said, "Well, dearie, I hope I'll see you often. You come in any time."

Nora, noting the contracted pupils, thought: she's mainlining now. She sighed, the reminder of the world's ceaseless misery striking through the juke-box noise.

Ramona giggled as Flora moved away. "Whew! Jill, my pet, you're playing with fire!"

"What do you mean?"

"Flora never bothers couples. It's bad for business. But when a new girl starts cruising her—"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, come off it. Cruising. Making eyes. Flirting!"

"I wasn't!" Jill protested.

Nora was wondering why on earth she had come. The place was harmless enough—she had been here a dozen or more times—but it was no place for Jill. She put down her second drink untasted. "Want to powder your nose, Jill?"

In the ladies room, which was cleaner than Nora expected, she glanced randomly into the mirror. "Do you want to leave, Jill?"

Jill smiled with mischievous stubbornness. "Why, no! I've always wanted to visit a place like this—I hadn't the least notion you'd know a lesbian bar!"

Nora sat down on the painted bench before the mirror. "This isn't, quite. It's borderline—the so-called gay world calls it square. It doesn't cater exclusively to homosexuals, and mostly it attracts the ones like Marg and Ramona, who try not to attract attention to themselves."

"And you?"

"Exactly," said Nora: smoothly, though the barb had hurt, "Otherwise it's very conservative; no men in drag, very few cruising butches."

"Darn! I thought that would be the interesting part!"

"I'm very sorry I can't accommodate you," Nora said stiffly, "but Flora doesn't want the police—or a lot of rubbernecking tourists who come to stare at the queers."

When they returned, Margaret and Ramona were dancing together, and Jill touched Nora's arm. "Dance with me?"

Nora had already stiffened to shove back her chair when the enormity of it struck her; and the memory... Pammy, teaching her to dance on the cool parquet floor of the library. She could not—she could not stand up here and take Jill in her arms.

"I'd rather not, Jill. I'm not much of a dancer."

"Please? Just once?"

"I really would rather not. Not here."

"You mean—" Jill's voice was almost shrill, "you’ll dance with me—but not here, where people might think—"

"I will not. My reasons are none of your business." Nora was angry now.

"Of course not!" Jill was breathing raggedly, two red spots on her cheek. "I didn't ask to come here, Nor. You brought me. But now that we're here, you turn prissy—"

The word, Pammy's word, repeated the lash on the sore spot. "Jill, lower your voice, people are looking."

"Let them look! I don't spend my whole life worrying about what people will think—"

Nora clenched her hand over Jill's bony wrist, her strong fingers crushing down; hard. Part of her confused cruelty was guilt—for Jill had only voiced what she herself had been thinking.

"Jill, I've taken a lot from you, but this I won't take. I'm damned fond of you," she added, in a voice that shook, "but not fond enough to let you make scenes in a bar and get away with it." She had to force herself to unlock her grip before she broke Jill's wrist. "Flora's on her way over. Pull yourself together."

Flora was apparently unaware of the contretemps, but Nora, remembering other occasions on which Flora had turned up—as if by magic—just in time for a brewing storm, could not face her.

Flora smiled blurrily at Jill. "I noticed you're not dancing, dearie. Would you dance with me?"

Jill, covertly rubbing her abused wrist, pushed back her chair. "I'd love to," she said quietly. "Nora doesn't feel like dancing. I was just trying to persuade her." And she moved away, Flora's arm around her waist.

Slowly, Nora became aware that Margaret and Ramona had returned to the table. Ramona giggled, and Margaret said viciously "That little bitch!"

"It's my fault," Nora muttered. "She went to a girls' school, she's used to seeing women dance together." She realized too late that her words must offend her friends, but felt constrained to defend Jill. She watched them, feeling a little sick at the sight of Jill encircled by Flora's craggy arms.

How do I get this way? It turns my stomach to see Jill with that old pervert—but who am I to call anyone a pervert?

As Flora and Jill passed their table, Ramona rose, touching Flora's shoulder lightly. "We'll be leaving soon. I'd like to dance with Jill first, do you mind?"

Flora relinquished Jill graciously; as the two girls spun away from the table, Ramona's wide skirt swinging out in time to the music, Margaret leaned across the table.

"Nora, when they get back, let's cut out of here. This is no good. Ramona's half drunk."

"Jill isn't any too sober. You were right; Marg; this was a nitwit idea and I apologize for it."

Margaret propped her chin in her hands, her loose fair hair spilling over the collar of her striped shirt. "Nor, it's none of my business, but—what the hell are you playing at with that kid?"

"She's no kid, Marg, she's older than you are."

"Whatever she is, it doesn't make sense. When she looks at you, her eyes light up—you've no business—you're on the wrong side of the street for that game."

"Pot calling the kettle black?"

"Nor, I had some reason, some excuse. You—you've got everything. A top professional reputation. Work that means something. The Major—"

Nora pleaded, "I thought you of all people would understand—"

"No. For you it's the last thing I could ever understand. As for Jill—well, hell, she's married, she's pregnant— what the devil is she doing in this galley? She doesn't look like a thrill-seeker, so what is it?"

"I only wish I knew! Maybe if I rub her nose in it, good and hard—believe me, Marg, I'm not playing around for kicks!"

"If she hurts you," said Margaret with unexpected violence, "I'll break her goddamn neck!"

Nora said, not looking up, "It's more apt to be the other way around."

"Are you sure of that?"

Jill and Ramona almost collapsed into their chairs.

"Oooh, I'm dizzy," Ramona squealed, and picked up her glass, drinking fast, and coughing. Jill's lipstick was smeared, and Nora refused to think about that.

"I hate to break the party up, but we're all working women. Let's go somewhere for some solid food."

She saw Ramona's guarded attempt to draw Jill aside, and briefly considered leaving her to it—rub her nose in it... but Margaret's drawn face decided her.

In the car she let Jill nestle against her like a sleepy, somewhat drunken child. She found a favorite crossroads restaurant; they gathered in a booth, silent, the effects of the drinks wearing off. Nora was surprised to see that it was barely ten. It seemed they had been sitting in Flora's half the night.

A gust of icy air blew around them; a man came in and plunked himself at the counter. "Coffee," he said with weary incisiveness, "black."

Nora straightened and stared. "You're out late, Vic."

He spun the counter stool to face them. "What are you doing here?"

"Out for a night on the town." Nora remembered; this had been a favorite hangout when she and Vic had snatched their crumbs of leisure together. Jill withdrew her hand.

"Come and sit with us, Vic."

He nodded pleasantly to Jill, politely to Margaret, and his eyes lingered on Ramona in surprise and discovery. "My God, Barbieri, I didn't know you out of uniform!"

"I’ll take that for a compliment," the dark girl said gaily as Vic slid into the booth. Margaret drew herself ungraciously against the wall. Nora met Margaret's cornered eyes, and sighed, remembering that Margaret had the unhappy quality of freezing up, silent, in a crowd. Jill, too, sat silent, making no effort to join in the fast repartee of Vic and Ramona. It was partly their quiet which made Nora say presently, "Vic, we were just leaving."

"Oh, it's early yet. I'm going to have more coffee. Who's with me?"

Ramona disregarded Margaret's mute headshake.

"Please."

Nora shrugged. "Me too, then. Jill? Marg?" The waitress nicked away and replaced cups. Vic rose and went to the juke box; the fluid colors shifted, spraying juicy green, sensual orange on his dark face. Ramona slid from her seat and joined him, leaning so close that her loose curls touched the man's shoulder. Margaret looked cold and wretched. Coins clattered; the bleat of a popular crooner filled the steamy air with the sweet strains of Ramona.

"I prefer my own version," Margaret muttered after the song had ended. "Ramona, I'd like to break your little neck, Ramona, I'll do it yet someday by heck..."

Jill giggled nervously as Vic and Ramona came back.

"Ramona, Nora really wants to get back," Margaret said.

"Must you?" Vic asked.

"I'm afraid we must, Vic."

The man glanced at Ramona. "Well, if you others must run along, I'll bring Ramona later."

"You don't mind?" Ramona dimpled.

Vic's eyes crossed Nora's for a split second, with a rapier flick of something like triumph. As they crowded into Nora's car they saw Vic and Ramona walking toward his gray Chrysler; Nora slammed in the clutch violently.

"Did I hear somebody call somebody a bitch?"

Before the Lenox apartments Margaret paused before getting out, her hand on the doorframe. "Jill, come over some time. We can play some records."

"Love to. And some night when Nora's working, we could go to a movie, too."

Nora leaned past Jill. "Marg," she said, "don't be too damned stoic this time, the kid's not worth it."

Margaret smiled, without amusement. "Physician," she said gently, "heal thyself."

Nora did not speak again until the door of their own apartment had closed behind them; then she exploded.

"That—little—whore!"

"Margaret? I liked her!"

"Ramona!" Nora pitched her coat at the divan; it missed but she let it lie there, and Jill stared. "Are you drunk?"

"No, but I'd like to be." Nora went to the kitchen and took down the almost full bottle of whisky. She poured a little in the bottom of a glass. "Nightcap, Jill?"

"A little. I don't understand—you said—she's a lesbian—"

"Ramona is a consummate bitch. Lesbian? Sure—or anything else that suits her at the moment." She had, Nora thought, confirmed Margaret's turning into that path; when Margaret was disillusioned and alone. "I'm no Puritan. But, damn it, Ramona doesn't have to flaunt her affairs under Marg's nose." She put the glass down. "Just because she stuck by Marg before, she thinks she can put her through hoops forever—I won't offer you another drink, Jill. It might be bad for the baby."

"I'd* forgotten all about the baby." Jill went into the bedroom and took off her shoes. "Why did you take me to Flora's?"

"I thought it would interest you, maybe."

"But when we were there—just like Marg and Ramona, but you wouldn't dance with me—"

"Why, Jill—" she held out her hand, but Jill jerked away.

"Don't worry about my feelings, it's too late for that! Treating me all evening like—like—" Jill's voice broke.

Nora put her arms around Jill and by main force pulled her down on the bed. She sat there holding Jill till the shaking quieted. Her own mind was almost a blank. At last she said, "Jill, we've never really talked about all this. Do you want to?"

Jill blew her nose. "Not if you don't want to. But—if you didn't want—why did you take me there anyhow?"

"Quite apart from the fact that Marg is my friend," she said, slowly, "I suppose I felt they'd accept our—situation, and that might make it easier for me to—to look it in the face." She clasped her hands, staring at an acid burn near one nail.

"But why is that necessary?" Jill asked. "I love you. Why is that something you have to accept, or not accept, or make it look and sound good? Why can't you take it for what it is? I love you."

Nora finally looked up. "But—you love Mack, don't you?"

"Oh, God, I don't know! I—I was lonesome, and I felt funny about being a virgin at my age, and I was wondering if there was something wrong with me because I'd never wanted any man. But now—now I feel as if I'd started an avalanche rolling, and I couldn't get out of the way!"

"Nobody can," Nora said, but Jill collapsed on the bedspread, digging her head into the pillow in silent, agonized sobs; so convulsive that Nora was alarmed.

"Jill, you mustn't cry like that, it's very bad for the baby."

"I hate the baby," Jill screamed, "I wish it would die, I wish it would die, die, die!" She pounded the pillow frantically with her fists.

Nora bent and gripped Jill's shoulders. Her voice trembled as much as Jill's.

"Stop this damned nonsense, or I'll phone Vic and have him put you in the hospital! You'll work yourself up into a miscarriage!"

"I only wish I could!" Jill struggled; went limp under Nora's hands, crying. "I'm—I'm sorry, Nor. I'll be good."

Nora straightened, ragged with the ache of pity. "Honey, you're overtired, and you've been drinking—which I shouldn't have allowed. You lie down and let me get you something to make you sleep." This was her fault, too.

When she came back with two phenobarbital capsules, Jill was undressed, lying on Nora's bed, her face scrubbed and penitent. Nora sat down beside her.

"Jill, you're pregnant, you've got to learn to expect these silly moods—not let them throw you."

"I don't want the baby to die. God forgive me for saying it. But I don't want a baby. I'll be an awful mother."

"You mustn't talk that way. Jill, the real reason you feel like this is because you're alone, when Mack should be sharing this with you. It's natural, to want your baby's father."

"But I don't," Jill said miserably, and laid her head in Nora's lap. Nora sighed and stroked her hair.

"Most pregnant women go through moods like that. You'll get over it," she said.

At least I hope you will. I hope I will. Hell, I'm only giving her the emotional support she ought to be getting from Mack. No girl ought to be alone at a time like this. Someone has to need her, love her, comfort her, make her feel wanted...

Then as she drew Jill closer, her hands going almost without volition to the fastenings at Jill's throat, a satirical self-knowledge knifed through her real concern.

She had known, of course, that there would be only one way to comfort Jill. Had Jill thrown her tantrum for this reason?

Or—had she herself goaded Jill into it? For an excuse to do just this?

Unnecessarily rough, she pulled away Jill's pajamas and switched out the light.

Jill's face tasted of salt under her kisses; the trembling mouth was still soft and pliant as if with tears. Nora closed her hands over the taut breasts until Jill moaned—with pain or pleasure Nora could not tell and did not much care.

Jill's body was still slim beneath Nora's; but the thought knifed Nora with an anger and frustration she could not understand; soon it would be swollen, promising, fruitful... he was first. It has nothing to do with me. The fantasy spun through her mind dizzily as she strained Jill into her arms with a violence new to them both, if I had been the one to make her pregnant, and reeled away before she was fully aware of the thought.

In a sort of frantic hunger she gripped Jill close; as if her lips, moving from the soft mouth down to the white throat, down to the small swelling breasts and avidly over every inch of the softness, could obliterate every former touch. Jill cried out softly in the grip of passion and sudden release, and Nora, as the storm center swept her too, felt a savage exaltation. Mine, she thought, mine now, at least. She fell asleep with Jill locked tightly in her arms.

CHAPTER 10

Late in February Kit underwent the final operation in the series; then, rapidly this time, he began to rally. The end of the year-long imprisonment was actually in sight.

Just before Easter, Nora arranged for a free afternoon and while Jill was shopping for maternity dresses, chose a spring suit; then she left Jill to finish her shopping alone and, for the first time in fifteen years, went to a beauty shop.

When she left, her head felt unfamiliar and cold, and Jill almost dropped her bundles, crying out, "Oh, Nora, that beautiful hair!"

"You don't like it this way?"

"It makes you look about ten years younger," Jill said, "What will Kit say?"

Nora, touching the feathery ends of her shorn hair, realized; it was the first time she had thought of Kit that afternoon. Catching a glimpse in a mirror, she felt a tardy spark of vanity. For years she had taken her hair for granted except as a nuisance to tuck under a surgical cap. It was pleasant to discover a new face under the one she had worn so long.

"Someone said, once, that the sense of being perfectly dressed did more for a woman than any religion ever known."

"Ramona said that, the night Marg and I went to the movies. She—Ramona—was all dressed up for a heavy date."

Nora frowned, reminding herself that Ramona had a perfect right to date Vic—or anyone. They were both adults and unmarried. But she had seen Margaret fall apart, once before; and it hadn't been pretty. Ramona was a cold, conniving bitch. Yet a word against her, to Vic, would be interpreted as simply, dog-in-the-manger spite.

Jill was trying on maternity dresses before the bedroom mirror, laughing at the picture she made in them, when the phone rang. Nora signed, cradling it against her cheek. Then, startled, she turned to Jill.

"For you. Long distance. They asked for Cassandra Bristol."

Warily, frowning, Jill took the telephone. "Hello? Susan, is it you? How did you get this number?" Nora was not trying to listen, but she could not avoid hearing the funny little tight tone of Jill's voice. "Is it—Mama?" Jill asked tremulously, and collapsed, rather than sitting down, on the sofa. At last she said draggingly, "Yes, I see. If I don't come when she's really ill, there will be all that much more talk. I'll take the midnight bus. All right, then, Su."

The phone clicked down; Jill turned as if to a stranger, and when Nora laid a hand on her shoulder, she was as rigid as a frightened bunny.

"Darling, you've had bad news?"

Jill's tongue moved over her lips. "My mother's had a stroke. Su says she keeps asking for me. I have to go."

Nora felt anger gusting up inside her; what hold did they have on Jill? After all they'd done, how was it that they could still pull emotional strings to make her jump like a marionette? She pulled Jill against her shoulder.

"Darling, if you feel like that, there's no one who can make you go, you shan't, I won't let you!" Then the enormity of the commitment in her words struck her. Jill only said miserably, "I'd have to go sometime, I suppose." Then, in a sort of dread, her eyes turned down. "But—the baby—"

It bothered Nora. Jill was basically such a sincere girl. She wasn't conventional, but she wasn't depraved, and Nora couldn't stand to see her shrink like a sentenced convict waiting for the scarlet letter.

"Don't be foolish, Jill. You're of age. It's your life and your baby. Damn your family!"

"It's easy to talk. But everybody can't spit in people's faces the way you do."

If it had been less serious, Nora would have laughed at the way they had exchanged roles. "Jill, dear, aren't you the girl who picked a fight with me because I introduced you to Marg as Mrs. MacLellan?"

"But—my mother—"

"Didn't you tell me—forgive me, Jill, I know you don't like talking about it, but doesn't she believe you were mixed up in a narcotics racket, and either drove your father to suicide or shot him?" Jill's face twisted, and Nora held her, trying by her consoling touch to take the sting from the words. "From what you yourself have told me, darling, I hardly see how she could think worse of you than you say she does."

"You don't understand women like Mama," Jill said desperately, "you can do anything, anything at all, but as long as you're what she calls decent, she—she'd call it her Christian duty to forgive me if I'd stole, or murdered, or committed treason—"

"I must say that's damn nice of her," Nora said dryly.

"But—oh, you don't know! Why, that year we knew you—Mama sent Pammy to an awfully strict boarding school, instead of letting her go to Miss Porter's with us, because she—Pammy never would tell me, but I think Mama actually caught her in bed with a boy."

Nora sat down, weak all over. It was like Mrs. Bristol to think she could cure Pammy's attachment to another girl by punishing her with confinement in a strict all-girl school. She was literally speechless.

"Mama almost had a heart attack over that. And now she's sick, she might die—And if she noticed I was pregnant—and she would—the shock might even kill her."

Nora finally found her voice. "Well, Jill, if that's what's worrying you—her peace of mind, not yours—you can simply tell her you were married last fall, can't you? Chances are, she'll be so pleased at the thought of a grandchild, she won't ask bothersome questions about where and when." But Nora watched, sighing, as Jill picked up the phone to check on bus schedules.

It was Jill's own refusal to face facts which had precipitated this situation. She slept with Mack without considering that she might become pregnant; she refused even to look at the results of her pregnancy test until it was forced on her. She had enrolled in college as Miss Bristol. What other facts would she refuse to face until too late?

She followed Jill into the bedroom and found her sitting on the bed, a damp kleenex wadded in her hand.

"Lie down and try to get a little sleep. I'll pack for you."

"I couldn't possibly sleep." Jill wiped her eyes again.

"Lie still and rest anyhow. How long will you be away?" She took a nightgown from Jill's drawer.

"I don't know. Two or three days. I'd better take Mack's picture, Su and Jackie will want to know—oh God, Nora, I hate this lying, lying—"

"Don't get yourself worked up," Nora insisted as she snapped the suitcase shut. She sat on the edge of the bed, touching Jill's curly hair. "Won't you try to sleep? You'll be up all night on the bus."

"Don't go away."

"I won't." Nora stretched out on top of the blanket, tucking her hands under her own shorn head. "My head feels so funny. Is this what people mean when they say they feel lightheaded?"

"I guess. Won't you get under the covers? You'll be cold."

"No, I'm all right here. I'll call you in plenty of time to get your bus." Nora raised herself on her elbow and lighted a cigarette. "Dear. You must sleep."

She thought Jill had dozed off when the girl stirred and said, "Oh, damn!"

"What's the matter?"

"Mack wanted to get me a wedding ring, and I wouldn't let him. My family will think it's dreadfully strange—"

"I don't wear one," Nora said, "lots of professional women don't. But knowing your family—"

She switched on the light; Jill winced and put a hand over her eyes. Nora brought a leather box from her dressing table and sat turning over the contents. She picked up a tiny white ring box, holding it tenderly. "This was my wedding ring," she said, and slipped it on her finger.

"Nora, it's lovely of you, but I couldn't—"

Nora laughed. "You certainly couldn't. I wouldn't let you." She picked up a twist of tissue paper. "Let's see if this will fit you. It was my mother's." She slipped the narrow gold circlet over Jill's finger, and as she did so a curious tremor shook her to the roots; but she kept her face impassive, neutral, smiling.

"See?" she said, "perfect fit."

I'm only giving her what she should have from Mack...

* * *

The bus station was almost deserted. Nora put Jill's suitcase on one of the wooden seats and said, "You have about twenty minutes, Jill. Do you want some coffee? Chocolate?"

"I couldn't." Jill was fiddling nervously with the ring on her finger. "Let's sit in the car."

In the dark front seat Jill leaned against her, and after a minute Nora put an arm around her waist.

"I hate to go, Nor. It's like the end of something."

"The end of anything is always the beginning of the next thing. You will come back, Jill?"

"I'll have to. The college. Did you think I wouldn't?" She swallowed. "I couldn't leave you, Nora."

"Dear, you mustn't—"

"Nora, I love you," she said desperately, "I love you—love you—"

Nora's arm tightened around Jill, but she could not speak. Damn me anyhow. Three words. I've said them easily enough to men I never gave a damn about. I said them to Les Rannock, and I ended by hating the ground he walked on. I've said them to my cat! Why not to Jill? I do love her. She's the sister my mother never gave me, the daughter I'll probably never have, all the friends I never had as a child—Jill ought to despise me for the damned hyprocrite I am. I take her confidence, her companionship, the comfort of her body, yet I can't give her three words she needs to hear me say.

She freed herself gently. "You'll smudge your lipstick, sweet."

"It's smudgeproof. Don't worry, there's none on you," Jill said, and Nora felt the scalding heat rise in her face.

"I think that's your bus. You'd better get a seat." She slid quickly away, and hurried around to open the door for Jill. As the girl mounted the bus steps, Nora stood outside, moving blindly backward, and realizing that she could not endure to go back to the empty rooms, that she had already begun to miss Jill beyond endurance.

CHAPTER 11

Kit's face had a tinge of color in the window-gleam of the watery sun that lingered, low and pale, on the rim of the world. "Nora," he said, laughing, "you've looked at that watch four times in ten minutes. Going to catch a train?"

"Meet one. Jill's coming in tonight."

"Oh, is that all?" Kit settled back, wondering if that were the best she could do.

He had seen the change. Early this winter she had seemed a walking matchbox, ready to strike fire; then he had seen the nervous tautness go. A week ago she had turned up in the first really becoming dress he had ever seen her wear; the long braids were gone, transforming the austere lovely woman into a young and pretty one.

He didn't see how Jill could account for the change; though it dated from her coming, and it did occur to him that having a younger, prettier woman in the house might have prompted Nora to take pains with her looks.

He had always guessed that behind her brusque, professional manner Nora was capable of warmth; he was pleased at the little sprigs and buds of her personality sprouting through. But he wished he could have called them forth...

"Did Jill's mother die or get better?"

"Jill called Friday to say she was out of danger. It was just a bad scare." And they had made use of it to pull Jill back to them. Nora found herself resenting the Bristols; though doubtless Jill would be happier, reconciled to her family. Even her voice on the telephone had sounded lighter, gentler, gayer.

"Kit, darling, do you mind if I leave now? It would only be ten or fifteen more minutes."

"No, go along, my love."

Nora bent to kiss him on the forehead; but Kit, in a sudden surge of possessiveness, pulled her head down, and for the first time in weeks, their lips met and clung. Nora put out a hand to steady herself and fell, half dazed, across him. He shifted automatically to protect his legs; then pulled her against him, hard, and for a minute the whole length of her body lay against his. Through the layer of bedclothes she felt the thrusting rise of his maleness; but he pulled away first, with a gasp that was almost a curse.

"Christ!"

Nora rolled away and sat up. She felt dazed, pulling at her twisted skirt, wishing she could cry, or scream, or curse him, or—or anything but stand there like a rooted tree, frantically conscious of all the men in the ward. She thought she heard a smothered laugh.

"Leonora, I'm sorry," Kit said at last. He could hardly speak.

She couldn't speak either. She knew if she did, she would break down in wild sobs of despair and shame.

* * *

She stood in the railroad station, still numb, though she had hastily repaired her face. It seemed she saw Jill through the wrong end of a telescope, very small and distant; not now wearing the babyish knitted cap, but a dark dress and coat that clung to her body; rounding now into gentler curves, but still young and fresh; her dark gloves sparkled at the wrist with gold and crystal, and fresh flowers were pinned to her coat.

"Hello, Nora darling, I didn't expect you to come all the way down and meet me." Her lips brushed Nora's cheek lightly. "No, silly, I can carry my own suitcase."

"Is everything really all right, Jill?"

"Mother and I didn't talk much. She wasn't very strong. She did say she might have—made a mistake about me. I don't know whether she meant it, or whether she was just trying to make peace." Jill, staring at the sky from which the sunset reds had all faded, said half to herself, "That's a terrible thing..."

Then, coming back to herself with a little shake, "How's Kit? Have you been very busy?"

"Terribly. Vic's been out, and there's still a lot of 'flu around."

"I hope Dr. Demorino isn't sick?"

"No, no. He said he'd been needing a week off. I've had to see some of his routine patients for checkups. And Ramona must have caught some sort of bug, she hasn't been in for three days. By the way," she added sternly, "Vic told me you skipped your last checkup."

Jill froze. "Are you in the habit of discussing me with him?"

"Don't be silly. Your address is the same as mine—naturally he asked if you'd been sick. Any conscientious man would."

Going to have trouble, Vic had said. I like to keep my eye on those little nervous ones. They're the ones who have complications and premature babies, because they won't take proper care of themselves. Your friend's a bundle of nerves. She shouldn't skip checkups. Give her hell about it, will you, Nora?

"Are you very tired, Jill? I'll drop you first, if you like; but this is the first day I've had time, and I'd like to see if Ramona's really sick."

"No, no, I'd like to see them, too."

There was no light under the apartment door, but after Nora's third knock Margaret Sheppard opened the door and stood blinking at them. Her face was puffy, and her crumpled slacks looked as if she'd been sleeping in them.

Nora said in consternation, "Marg, are you sick? Why didn't you call me?"

"No. Come in. I was taking a nap."

The bed was unmade, clothing scattered everywhere, and the door to the glass porch swung open, empty.

"Why, where are all the cats?"

Margaret sat down on the frowsy bed. "I'm not quite awake yet. I didn't work today. Have you a cigarette?"

Nora handed her the pack, taking in the slight tremble of Margaret's hands. "What's happened? Where's Ramona?"

The clock ticked loudly thirty or forty times. "She's—gone.”

"Gone?”

"She's married."

And suddenly Nora knew it all and the words jumped from her. "So this is why Vic wanted a week—"

Margaret's words dropped like lumps of lead. "She didn't come home Saturday, or Sunday. Monday is my late night at work, and when I came in, she'd been here and packed and gone. She left a note saying she and Dr. Demorino had driven over the state line and been married."

"I'll be—damned."

"If only she'd told me. She didn't have to sneak away when she knew I wouldn't be here. Nor, I always knew it would happen some day, but to do it like that—"

"Marg, don't, you're only torturing yourself."

"She left an envelope with thirty dollars because the cats were half mine. They were worth a lot more, but she left me the phonograph and records—I'd like to throw her damned money in her face."

"Nine chances out of ten she wants just that," Nora said, letting her anger free for one luxurious moment, "to start up the whole mess over again. Don't you do it, Marg. Keep the money and spend it. Or give it to Korean relief or something. Listen, Marg, I've got to say this even if it makes you hate me," Nora said, and went and stood by the girl, "Cut your losses, write her off. Or she'll keep you dangling for the sheer hell of it. And I wish Vic would find out, and kick her ass into the Hudson River— Marg, listen, get into a clean dress and come to dinner with us, don't sit here by yourself."

"Nor, honestly, I couldn't. Look at this place."

"It will keep, and dinner won't." Nora went and got her a freshly ironed blouse and skirt. The closet looked empty. "Wash your face, Marg. Doctor's orders."

Blurrily, Margaret smiled. "Okay. I've always done what you told me, and never regretted it yet."

"That's a heck of a responsibility.”

Nora waited until the bathroom door was shut and the sound of the running water would drown her voice. "I don't want to leave her alone. I saw her crack up once."

Jill was looking confused. Nora supposed it was quite a situation to walk into—fresh from the conventional Bristol household. It occurred to Nora to be surprised at herself, too. On the surface she should be pleased because her very capable office nurse had married her partner. Yet she saw only the grief of a woman whose bereavement, and betrayal, could not even be admitted.

Grasping at sanity, she said, "I suppose you can't really blame Ramona. But after all she's done to Marg—!"

Margaret came back, her face scrubbed, and began to comb out her light hair. She pencilled lipstick on her mouth, and sighed. "Do I look all right?"

"You looked all right before," Jill lied gently, "but fresh clothes make anyone feel better, Let's go."

Nora had briefly considered taking them out to dinner, but Margaret was in no mood for sociability. To Margaret—as to Nora herself—society and distractions were kept to enhance happiness, not to chase away troubles. She supposed that was one reason why, during Kit's long hospitalization, she had been isolated and vulnerable to brooding—but she made the gesture as they drew up before her house:

"We can go out, if you'd rather—where there's music and a drink—"

"Good God, no," Margaret said, "I tried that last night in Flora's. You know what the grapevine's like. I turned up alone and before the evening was over, I'd had three propositions."

Nora just shook her head.

She left Margaret with Jill while she prepared a quick meal. They ate in silence.

After dinner Jill went to unpack; Nora, looking at Margaret curled on the sofa—tall, long-legged, her thin face grave and withdrawn—had the uneasy sensation of a mirror image of herself. She was not happy about the involvement she felt with Margaret's problem.

The cat Archy jumped up, and Margaret moved her hand absently over the silky fur. "I thought Ramona—" then her face crumpled, and she shook her hand in a rough rejection, flinging the cat away. She looked ready to cry.

"Nora, you know Dr. Demorino very well, don't you?"

"Very well, yes." Suddenly Nora knew what Margaret meant. "Good grief, Marg, I had no idea this was coming." She spoke truthfully; but after she said it, she knew it was not true. She had seen it—but couldn't interfere. Vic would have thought I was jealous...

Jill came in, and Nora rose quickly. "Drink?"

"Fine," said Margaret, and Jill said, "I didn't know you ever touched hard liquor."

"Oh yes. I stopped because for a while Ramona was drinking more than was good for her. I used to have to cover for her; so I never wanted to start her off."

Nora, who hadn't known that, raised her eyebrows. Now she had an excuse ready-made—but after all, what excuse could she give Vic, for dismissing his wife from the office that was his, too? She went for the drinks. When she returned, Jill was saying, "—of course, Marg. Tolerance of homosexuality—or any offbeat sex—goes in direct ratio to intelligence."

"At the level where I grew up," Margaret said bitterly, "it works the other way. Mother wouldn't let me go to college because college women were immoral."

"By her standards, they probably were. I'm sure I am," Jill said.

"So they pride themselves on being more decent somehow! Because they're still intolerant of everything except plain, brute, animal sex which they call natural!"

"It's our society, honey," said Nora, handing around drinks. "We have about six different levels of social progress all the time, with half the population at least a hundred years behind the rest—socially."

Margaret said, "Of course there have to be children. Race survival. But, Nor, lots of women get married with the fixed idea that they won't have children. They want to work, or something. And some women can't have children.

Yet they can marry, and nobody calls them immoral. How is a lesbian affair different?"

"Maybe," Jill said, "that's going to be the new morality. To accept sex only as an expression of love, and never for money. Or security. I'd be ashamed to marry a man just so he'd support me and my kids!"

Nora did not take up the challenge. "Well, Jill," she said, "society has to make some provision for its young. It would be kind of rough on women if men didn't support their kids, wouldn't it?"

Jill flared, "That's just a—a convention! In Russia women work just like men!"

"But who wants to live in Russia? And most men want to support their wives and families, in our society."

"They want to keep a woman in prison all her life, in return for a meal ticket!" Jill snapped.

Margaret said wearily, "You're right about one thing, Nora. Conventions protect people from their own irresponsibility. Isn't that where most unconventional relationships break down? Free love never does work, and most lesbians just—drift. The only thing that gives people any real claim on each other is marriage."

"Marriages break up too," Jill protested. "Nothing, no convention, can make a relationship work, except the people involved. Even ties of blood can't hold it together if it isn't working."

"But no," Margaret argued. "If you and a husband have a row, or you see someone you like better, you have to go through the courts, and divide up the furniture, and provide for the kids, and argue with your in-laws, and maybe you think better of it. But if you and a—a—a lover have a fight, one of you packs up and walks out, and that's that." She swallowed. Nora knew that only in this oblique way could Margaret talk about what was hurting her; but she said:

"Mack used to say that even the stuffiest conventions made sense—even if intelligent people couldn't see why. A mathematical genius can solve problems in his head, but for most people it helps to memorize the multiplication table, and stick to it."

"Are you saying—there should be one set of rules for the intelligentsia and another set for ordinary people?"

"No, only—if you break the rules, you should know exactly what you're getting into. If you don't, you're safer sticking with the rules."

"But sometimes," Jill said, very low, "you get into a situation where there aren't any rules."

Margaret's eyes darkened. "Oh yes. There's always one. Thou shalt not." She stood up. "I've got to go really; if I don't work tomorrow I may not have a job."

"Want to sleep here? The couch is perfectly comfortable."

"Thanks. But no." Margaret collected her coat.

"Then let me drive you."

"Nora, I'm not going to swallow a handful of sleeping pills, or jump off the Hudson bridge!"

"I know, Marg. But you're acting awfully queer."

"I am awfully queer," Margaret said, "Aren't we all?"

Jill came up suddenly with her coat on. "I'll walk you home. Nora needs the car, anyhow, in case she gets a call." To Nora's surprise, Margaret went without protest, and Nora watched them go, frowning. What could she say without seeming to criticize? And who had given her the right to criticize? She lay awake for a long time, but when, at a quarter of three, she was summoned to the hospital where a cardiac patient was failing, Jill had not come home.

CHAPTER 12

Now there was a definite date set to the end of the time of waiting. On May 15th—so Dr. Kuysman said—Kit Ellersen would be discharged from the hospital.

Nora arranged for a three months leave of absence, finding a young man recently finished with his resident year at St. Margaret's, to take over her practice. Now that there was a real shape to their future, Kit seemed sobered.

"I've got stagefright," he admitted. "Been tucked up so long, I'm not sure how I'll make out on my own. And something else we never discussed. I've got a partial-disability pension, but I let the business go when I went back in the hospital, and no telling how soon I'll be able to build it up again."

"Why worry about that now, Kit? Just—drift a while."

"Dammit, I've been drifting for three years," he exploded, then laughed. "Oh, well. We're lucky I wasn't an acrobat. I can always make out in an architect's office."

"Kit, we don't need to worry about money."

"I won't be pigheaded about that. Every wife works for her husband one way or another. But I can't sit around and let you support me indefinitely, Leonora," he added, his chin set in the stubborn line she knew.

"Problem for Jill now," said Nora, "finding a place to live."

"The sexy brunette? Maybe you'd better keep her around." Abruptly he said, "On second thought, I don't think I could manage a harem," and the quality of his glance altered; became so intimate that Nora could hardly face his eyes.

However, before Nora had a chance to bring it up, Jill told her that she was moving in with Margaret Sheppard.

"Marg can't afford that apartment on her salary alone. And now that Kit's coming home, it seemed the perfect solution."

"What about after the baby comes?" Jill had once mentioned some plan of Mack's to fly home for a week or two in August, and be with her when the baby was born. But she hadn't mentioned it lately and Nora hadn't asked.

"Marg said she wouldn't mind having a baby around. And Nor, I looked at apartments all week, and only found one I liked—and they wouldn't rent it to me when I told them about the baby."

Nora looked speculatively at Jill. She was well into the fifth month now; but she carried herself so well that a casual observer would not have noticed anything. She had not begun wearing maternity dresses, even; the crinoline-bouffant fashions this spring were concealing enough for street wear.

They were silent and a little constrained during these last few days, and Nora found herself remembering the weeks in Fairfax—when she had thought that their return to Albany would end the tension between them. It struck her, perhaps, that she was not being quite fair with Jill; but it no longer seemed important.

She knows it will end when Kit comes home...

But when, that night, Jill came softly to her side, and held out her arms, Nora drew her down with an almost despairing sense of guilt and loss. Her hands, her mouth moved on Jill almost in desperation; Jill clung to her wildly, and even through the hunger of passion, Nora thought; what am I doing, what have I done to her? Jill, as simply and forthrightly as always, seemed to sense Nora's despair; and gave herself with fresh, spontaneous warmth, so freely that Nora's tension of guilt vanished in the delight of holding Jill, tender and pliant, in her arms, and the mutuality of the joy that swept them out of their single place in space and time. But long after Jill slept, Nora lay awake, the old doubt and despair creeping slowly back.

* * *

The first week in May, Nora came home one night to find Jill slumped face down on the divan. She had been crying; but when she heard Nora, she looked up, dry-eyed.

"Dean Bulwer called me in today. As a grad student, I was required to have a physical—"

Of course. Nora gathered up Jill's scattered armload of books. "She had your pregnancy report?"

Jill said with a dreary laugh, "I guess she'd expected me to wallow in hysterics. When I didn't, she said she could see she wasn't dealing with a schoolgirl in a mess. There is a regulation on the books, that students are supposed to get the Dean's permission to marry, but she hemmed and hawed and said after all in this day and age, and so forth. I guess she just wanted me to tell her I was married."

Nora said, gripped in the claws of an awful suspicion, "I hope to heaven you did tell her that!"

"I most certainly did not."

Oh Lord, of course not. That would be too sensible.

"Would you mind telling me why not?"

"I don't mind lying to save you embarrassment, or my mother a shock. But if you think I'd lie to that old battle-axe—"

Of course not. Jill must always, always punish herself. "Dear God," said Nora, "so did she expel you, or just ask you to resign? You certainly didn't leave her much choice."

Jill pleated a fold in her skirt with nervous fingers. "Oh, she started in about how I had excellent references, but that Loudon expects their instructors to be morally above reproach, so forth and so on, that they had a responsibility toward—get this, Nora—toward their girlies!"

"Well, Jill—"

"Oh, I could tell her a few things about her girlies," Jill went on at white heat, "her nice girlies. The ones who carry a diaphragm around in their handbags. Or the other ones who've been taught that they have to save their cherry for a rich husband—"

"Jill, for heaven's sake! What did you expect? You didn't leave the poor woman a loophole, did you? I'm trying to imagine what would have happened to me if I'd started a baby in college—and everyone knew I was married! If one of the unmarried teachers had turned up pregnant, she'd probably have been tarred and feathered. I don't say I approve, but that's the way things are."

Jill bit her lip. "Oh, she didn't kick me out. She said there was no reason I shouldn't finish out the term, provided—this is how she put it—I was willing to be discreet. They'd just assume I'd been married all along."

"It seems she bent over backward to be lenient." As everyone did, Nora was thinking, with Jill. The providence that protects fools and children.

"I ought to know by now that hypocrisy pays off!"

"Oh, stop it! Why do you insist on punishing yourself?" And again she felt the premonitory dread. What other facts would Jill refuse to face?

"Jill, where are you going?"

The girl was ripping off her dress, flinging each piece into a corner. She pulled down one of the maternity smocks and hauled it over her head with twitching fingers. "There!" she said, choking, "now let those filthy-minded girls giggle about what I've been doing! Now nobody can say I'm trying to hide anything!"

Nora turned her back on Jill and went out. She had to. If she had not—even now she was not sure whether she had wanted to slap and shake some sense into the girl—or take her in her arms.

"Oh Kit, Kit," she whispered, falling on the divan still warm from Jill's body, "for God's sake come home before something terrible happens!"

CHAPTER 13

Kit Ellersen roused up, not certain where he was. After the bareness and faraway noises of a hospital at night, these close walls, moon-striped with dark spaces and white, seemed alien. There was a subtle fragrance in the room, strange after months of disinfectant smells. Nora's perfume.

Stiffly, Kit sat up, making out the dark line of Nora's body in the other bed. The luminous clock marked eleven. He grinned crookedly; three years ago that would have seemed a lot too early for bed. He had been asleep since three that afternoon.

Hell of a trick! Lie down for half an hour and fall asleep like a sick pup. Rough on the poor girl. She just let him sleep, too, bless her.

He stretched out again, with a restless shove at his pillow. Hell, she might as well sleep!

It had been bad enough when they only saw each other in the antiseptic atmosphere of the ward. Living together would make it worse.

He'd never forget—it had kept cropping up in his worst hospital nightmares, and he'd had some dillies...

It had been a quiet wedding; half a dozen of Nora's hospital friends. They had decided to stay in Nora's apartment until he could design, and begin building, their own home. You couldn't have paid him to live in one of those mass-produced crackerboxes in the suburbs.

It had started so well, in a surge of confidence and joy. He had learned to maneuver so easily on his crutches that he was not even aware of them; only a small sting of consciousness touched him now and then. Nora was lovely in blue; too austere, but he already knew about the responsive, giving passion behind that mask.

When they went into the bedroom he had the old exhilaration of climbing into a jet—the perfect shapes and functional beauty, the breathless muted surge of almost tonic fear covered by a calm layer of confidence. He recognized the sensation, and welcomed it. He had thought it gone forever—after the accident, when he knew he'd never fly again—that particular excitement born of anticipation, excitement, eagerness and joy.

Nora had unpinned but not unbraided her bright plaits; they lay thick and soft on her bare shoulders. Tall as she was, she felt small in his arms. He took his time, kissing and caressing her, revelling in the softness of her body, the delicacy of her breasts. She had remarkably small breasts for a woman so tall; they seemed somehow more sensually perfect than the ample curves of a Hollywood sexpot. He was content to go easy, feeling her waken and respond to his hands. They had waited for each other, knowing it would be good, not wanting to blunt the edge of discovery and passion that they both knew would explode when they gave it leave; savoring its slow unfolding.

It boiled up in Kit like a searing hurricane; an ache of heat in his loins, an impatient hunger and need. He seized her roughly, his hands guiding her; violently, forgetting all caution, he rolled on top of her.

A burning bite of agony lanced from his bad leg up through his body, stabbed into his heart, and in a flame like the explosion that had crippled him, he fainted.

He came to himself with the hurting sting of ammonia in his nostrils; Nora, a robe drawn tight around her nakedness, was bending over him. She hushed him, made him lie quiet and sip brandy, when he tried to speak. Afterward, when she asked questions, he had yelled at her; sick with humiliation. "Quit it! I'm not your patient!"

She had crumpled, her hands over her face. Kit thought she was crying; he did not know yet that Nora could not cry. It was agony as she forced the words out. "I was frightened for you—I thought I'd—I couldn't stand it..." and he had broken into his lashing self-accusations by taking her in his arms, trying helplessly to comfort her shaking anguish. Quiet, with the passivity of her fright, she lay against him; and hours later Kit said into the darkness, "All right, Leonora. It's not fair to you. You were right all along." The next day he had made arrangements to go back to the hospital, telling her only after it was done:

"I won't have people saying you've tied yourself down to a—a damn cripple!" A year—five years—it was little enough, to make himself worthy of her.

A quiet rapport had grown between them in that week; love growing constantly, passion with the lid on. Twice—Kit with humiliating caution, Nora anxious and fearful—they had managed to make love. It hadn't been good. It hadn't been what they wanted. But it had been better than nothing. A token; a down payment against the good times they knew would come.

And that first horror had tormented Kit in his worst hospital nightmares. He'd be double damned if he'd let anything like that happen again. He wasn't going to start anything he couldn't finish.

And Nora had changed, this winter; the woman to whom he returned was hardly the one he had married. Kit wasn't conceited enough to think she'd bloom like that, just waiting around for him! Kit had fought a bitter battle, that endless spring, facing the possibility that Nora had a lover. Well, he whispered to the barred moonlight, why not?

I wouldn't want anyone, even my wife, to go through what I went through—waiting. Even my wife? Hell—especially my wife!

Yet in the dark room with her perfume drifting around him, Kit felt his nerves screaming. He wanted her, if only to touch; to kiss without some damned nurse skulking around. With shaking hands, he reached for a cigarette. He hated smoking in bed; no man who has been dragged from a burning plane ten seconds before it exploded is ever again going to be casual about setting things on fire. But this was a calculated risk.

He snapped the lighter, its tiny flame blinding out the moonlight.

"Kit?"

He dropped the cigarette, and caught it, scorching his thumb. "Damn. Did I wake you up, sweetheart?"

"I wasn't asleep." She crossed the room, taking one of his cigarettes, and moved a chair close. Kit said irritably, "You can sit on the bed, I'm not fragile."

"It's just a habit, Kit."

"Well, get the hell out of that habit, I'm no patient." But he laughed. "Put a light on."

She flicked on the bedlamp. She was wearing silky blue pajamas, and her hair, tumbled from the pillow, had a copper halo of tiny hairs apart from the rest. It occurred to Kit that this was the first time he had seen it like that. After the careful braids it seemed somehow more intimate than nakedness. He had never noticed the very few tiny golden freckles on her skin. Her breasts were barely defined beneath the pajama shirt; her whole body—straight back, narrow thighs—looked strong and spare and hard, but Kit remembered how soft she was, the competence of her body to his own.

He said, "I've never seen you in a nightgown."

"I don't own any." Remotely she remembered, Les Rannock used to say; pajamas are better when you're out of bed, and who the heck wears anything in bed?

"Come to think of it, Jill gave me a fancy nightgown for my birthday. I've never had it out of the box."

Kit chuckled. "I'd think Jill would run to white cambric buttoned up at the neck."

Nora laughed at that mental picture. "You couldn't possibly be more wrong." Dangerous ground, the built-in censor warned her; but Kit pulled her down and kissed her.

She lay carefully stretched along the edge of the bed; Kit, too, had felt a brief, split-second shock of pain when she lowered herself, and wondered upsettingly if Nora had felt him flinch.

She murmured "I won't go to sleep here, darling."

"No harm if you do," he grunted, "it's legal."

Nora started to say, that's not what I meant; then withheld the protest. Never in her most fantastic imaginings had she dreamed that when she lay at last in Kit's arms another touch and kiss would present itself to her memory. When she laid her head against his chest she felt a little shock at its flat hard bareness.

With unpracticed but deft hands he undid the buttons of her pajama shirt and slipped it off her slight smooth shoulders. She felt the roughness of his scarred' sinewy palm against her breast, like a caress. His mouth enfolded her lips and, with a long sigh, Nora gave herself hungrily to the kiss.

The pent tension of months was in that kiss; raw maleness, the stabbing thrust of his tongue pulsing roughly in her. She felt his heart booming like an echo of her own pounding blood. He pulled off her pajama pants, his hands lingering, molding every curve, pressing into her back with an almost brutal tension. "Oh, God, it's been so long, so long..."

Through the wild pounding of her heart, Nora felt a sudden knifing fear, as he leaned over her. "No, Kit," she protested quickly, "Not that way—here, let me help you—"

"Damn it, be quiet!" he almost shouted, and his arms tightened with a furious strength. Dismayed, Nora dared not protest—dared she humiliate him?—but her own desire had all but vanished in the tension of her fear that he would hurt himself.

He was stronger than she had dreamed, strong and violent, forcing her down beneath his body. Then her fear for him became stronger than her regard for his pride—

"No, Kit—please, be careful—"

Kit crushed his hand over her mouth, rasping, "Shut up, shut up!" Then remorsefully, harshly, "Darling, darling—" and his mouth was on hers again; demanding, almost cruel with savage need.

And Nora, a woman and alien to his mood, could only guess at the instinct stronger than pain, stronger than his fear of failing again. The need in Kit to prove himself virile, strong, capable; to impose the strength of his will and his body on her. NOW, when HE desired it; not when she allowed or felt it wise or safe.

She tried to shift herself, to make it easier for him, and he gripped and held her with strong hands; then he was over her, holding her down, insistent, the ferocious rhythm of raw male hunger claiming her by natural right of his strength; sweeping away all her caution and dread as her own pent-up hunger stirred, waking to meet his own. The year of hunger, of frustration, of tensed, thinned-out anguish, thinned away and vanished like cloud is thrust away by a violent wind; and Kit's hoarse cry in the darkness was rough with exaltation and the savage sureness of his own mastery.

"There, love," he said huskily in the darkness, his fingers gently touching her eyes, moving over her face as a man touches, with love, something he has long desired and finally made his own, "Didn't I tell you it would be worth it all?"

* * *

When Kit had been home three weeks, Nora went down to her office to locate some records young Cranford wanted. When she had found them, and discussed a case or two, she came out and was startled to come face to face, in the waiting room, with Jill.

Vic, a friendly hand on Jill's shoulder as he detained her, came hurrying over to Nora.

"How's it going, girl? When are you going to consult me professionally? Three weeks ought to be time enough to get a kid in the cooker. My God, can you still blush?"

Nora touched her reddened cheeks, laughing helplessly. "Jill, where on earth have you been keeping yourself? Kit's been wanting to see you—and so have I." She tucked Jill's hand under her arm. "Come home with me and say hello."

Jill hung back. "Oh, no, really."

Nora didn't insist. "Let me drive you home, then. It's too hot to walk—and those heels!" She frowned at the pencil-slim heels and pointed toes. Jill looked down at her shoe tips. She had to draw back her smock to see them.

"I've got to keep up my morale somehow. There was a lot to be said for the times when it wasn't decent for a pregnant woman to be seen on the street."

Nora laughed, closing the car door. "Well, if Vic hasn't scolded you, I won't either." She rummaged for her keys. Jill leaned forward suddenly and caught her wrist.

"When did you start carrying things in a handbag instead of stuffing them in your pockets? And—why, Nora, you're wearing your wedding ring!"

"Well—" Nora colored suddenly and looked away from Jill. She thrust the key into the ignition.

A fresh evening breeze blew across the park. Jill was still holding Nora's hand; Nora moved uneasily, and Jill released her.

"What did Vic have to say?" asked Nora, backing away from the curb.

"Oh, the usual, with a warning that I might have miscalculated and be in the seventh month, and to get ready to go to the hospital any time," Jill said with a restless shrug. "He gave me a prescription."

"Let's see it." Nora gave the blank a quick startled look as she changed gears. Jill asked edgily, "You don't approve?"

"You're not my patient. Why should I approve or disapprove?"

"You're just the same as always." Jill laid a clinging hand on Nora's arm. Nora squinted her eyes into the sunset. "You look tired, Jill. Not getting enough rest?'

"I've had some trouble sleeping."

"So I gathered," said Nora, handing her the prescription. "Babies are nocturnal animals, they say."

Jill stared at the floor of the car. "I miss you."

"Well, you know where I live." Nora stopped laughing. "I miss you too. Of course."

"But it's different. Can't we go somewhere and just talk awhile?"

"Not very well. I don't like leaving Kit alone too long. Unless—could you come back for supper?"

"No. Please, can't we just talk awhile?"

Nora sighed, braking for a red light. "I'll drive around. Unless you want coffee, or a drink somewhere. One won't hurt you."

"Not unless you do." She looked at Nora miserably as the lamp-posts flowed by. "Nora, what's wrong?"

"Nothing. I can't stay out long, that's all. Jill, what did Vic really say? Why are you looking at me like that? If something's the matter, for God's sake tell me, I'm no mind-reader. Have you heard from Mack?"

"Mack?"

The dull repetition snapped Nora's nerves. "Mack. Or have you forgotten who he is?"

"No, nothing much. He still says he'll try to fly home in August."

"That's wonderful, maybe he can be here when you go to the hospital." Nora drew up before the Lenox apartments. "How is Margaret?"

"She went to a movie. Can't you come in?"

"Dear, I really can't. Come over to lunch one day this week, won't you? Wednesday?"

"Maybe you'd rather I didn't," said Jill sulkily.

"You're not in a very good mood, are you? Here, don't forget your prescription." Duotal. That was a considerably stronger sedative than the mild barbiturates Vic usually prescribed for prenatal insomnia. "Maybe you'll be feeling better by Wednesday."

"Does Kit—"

"As a matter of fact, Kit asked me to ask you!"

"Oh." Jill opened the car door. "That makes it all right, then, I'll come. Glad you could spare the time."

"Don't mention it," said Nora automatically, before she heard the sarcasm; but Jill was already out of the car.

"Jill, wait," she said, and started to get out, but the girl had already climbed the iron-railed steps, not looking back. Nora slammed her foot on the accelerator, then felt her anger dissolve. She had walked into this; and she owed something to Jill. If it was no worse than putting up with her sulks, she was getting off lightly.

CHAPTER 14

After lunch they lingered at the table, Nora smoking, Kit and Jill nibbling idly at the candy mints. "You'll get fat, Jill," Kit teased, "three whole mints, and that e-nor-mous lunch! You ought to watch your waistline!"

Jill giggled. "How could I possibly miss it?"

"Gerda's going to think you don't like her cooking any more," Nora said idly.

Kit reached for Nora's hand and turned her wrist over to look at her watch; an absent-minded, possessive little gesture. "Leonora, I've got to be in Kuysman's office at two. I'd better be getting along."

"Want me to drive you?"

"No, no—no telling when His Nibs will see me. I'll call a cab—stay and gossip with Jill." He gave a her a quick, secret wink.

Shall I tell Jill today? Nora smiled at her plate, hugging her secret. "Finish your peach, Jill. In China, peaches are a symbol of fertility. Funny, I haven't thought of that in years."

"She doesn't need any fertility symbols," said Kit, “you're just a great big fertility symbol walking around, aren't you, honey bun?"

Nora thought; if I teased Jill about her pregnancy, she'd snap or sulk. Kit does it and she just giggles.

She chided gently, "Kit, aren't you even going to get out of those old trousers and put on a necktie?"

"Really, Leonora! A burlesque dancer can go around in a couple of fans, but I hardly think Kuysman would appreciate seeing me without pants and with nothing but a necktie!" He bent to snatch a kiss from her cheek. "No, darling. If old Kuysman can't survive the sight of my bare neck, he's out of luck."

"It's a nice neck," Nora said softly, kissing him.

"It's a beautifully suntanned neck," Jill said. "How do you manage that in the city, Kit?"

"I don't, in the city. We drive out to the lake two or three times a week. Hey, if I get back early enough, why not drive out with us? Swimming's one of the few things I can do. You'd never guess how nice Nora looks in a bathing suit."

"Better than I would. Now, anyway."

"Oh, you'll be back in swimming shape soon. We'll have to teach that youngster of yours to swim the way the Polynesians do—throw them in the ocean when they're just a day or two old. See you later."

As Nora stacked the dishes, Archy erupted from a corner and flung himself on Jill like a kitten. She picked him up and buried her face in his fur, talking cat-talk to him with her nose. Nora watched, smiling.

"The riddle of the world. Is it love, or does he smell the chops you had for lunch?"

The June sunlight beat through the glass, filtered of city grime by the ivy in the window. Jill put the cat down. "That's a pretty dress, Nora."

"It's nice not to be wearing hospital whites. You'll know how I feel, when you get out of those maternity smocks," Nora said absently, debating how to finish. Should she simply say; I think I'll be wearing them myself pretty soon?

"It's cooler in the living room." She stretched out in an armchair, and Jill came and sat on the arm.

"Silly kid. Why not sit on my lap and be done with it?"

Laughing, she pulled Jill across her knees. "Rock-a-bye baby," she crooned, in her faulty, unmusical voice, and drew the girl's head to her shoulder.

"What's the matter, Jill? Feeling bad?"

She was suddenly, overwhelmingly shocked by what she was doing. She had been so sure it was all over, she had pulled Jill to her lap in teasing impulse; now her own reaction struck her aghast.

"On second thought, you're too big for a baby," she said tightly, "sit on your own lap." She dumped Jill unceremoniously, straightening her knees and letting the girl slide down with a bump. Jill said "Ouch!" and Nora leaned over and gave her a hand as she clumsily picked herself up.

"Sorry, I shouldn't be so rough. You do feel rotten, don't you? You look as if you could use about a week in bed, Jill."

She crossed the room indecisively, standing before the Chinese painting. One of the small figures, twisted into the lotus posture, resembled the curving line of Jill's sullen shoulders.

"Jill, I've something to tell you."

"I know. I've seen it coming."

"You know already?"

"I know. You don't want me hanging around here."

Nora, so full of her own news, was at first monstrously shocked; then on the defensive. "Jill, for heaven's sake, that's not funny!"

"Wasn't that what you were going to say?"

"Of course not, idiot! Be reasonable!"

"And I know what you mean by reasonable! Don't worry, I'll try not to bother you any more—" Jill sobbed. Nora held herself, by concentrated will power, from touching the girl; though she was appalled by the words.

"Sweet. Can't you see, now, why I begged you not to tear yourself up like this? I don't want to hurt you, Jill. But you always knew it couldn't go on."

"You wanted it as much as I did."

"I did," said Nora through dry lips, "I'm not trying to deny that, Jill. I thought—"

"I know what you thought," Jill said, trembling, deathly white, "You thought you could—could use me while you had to have somebody, and now that you don't, you could tell me off and send me to hell—"

"Jill—oh, darling, that's not fair. Baby, come here, let me talk to you," Nora pleaded, but Jill pulled fiercely away, and Nora dropped her arm!

"You're just working yourself up, Jill. You want to make a scene."

"I don't! I don't!"

"Then pull yourself together, can't you? Suppose Kit came in and found you like this?"

"You would hate that, wouldn't you? Don't touch me!" Jill jerked away, flung herself into a chair and collapsed there, crying convulsively.

Nora bent over Jill, saying angrily, "Stop that bawling, or I'll slap you with a wet towel! Damn it, can't we talk sensibly, do we have to have a scene and hysterics? You make me want to shake you till your teeth rattle!"

"Then go ahead and do it," Jill wept.

"Why, you'd almost enjoy that, wouldn't you," Nora took Jill roughly by the shoulder and dragged her to her feet.

"Oh, Nora, don't, you're hurting—what do you want me to do? Go on my knees to you?"

Nora's hands were bruisingly hard on Jill; her fury had crystallized suddenly into dry rage, so that she watched herself almost horrified, from what seemed a spinning distance of miles. She heard her own voice distorted with what she knew was hysteria almost more frightening than Jill's because kept in such terrible control.

"I'll tell you what I want," she said, punctuating the words with a rough shake, "I want you to get out of here! Why do you have to wreck everything? I want you to let me alone!"

She had only meant, until you can behave like a rational adult; but her own guilt and hysteria betrayed her; her voice trembled. "Let me alone, I tell you! Are you trying to break me up with Kit? I won't let you, you can't, I can't take any more!"

Jill pulled free and stumbled away from Nora. Nora, realizing too late what she had done, caught at her. "Jill!"

"Let me go! Don't worry, I won't bother you again!"

"Jill—"

"You told me to get out!" Jill wrenched the hall door open and Nora caught it. "You can't go on the street like this—"

Jill swung the door free, slid through, and slammed it in Nora's face. Nora took one step to follow her and stopped, weak with reaction. She couldn't face another scene in the hall or, worse, in the street. There was a sickish, sour taste in her mouth. Then, suddenly, her paralyzed horror broke.

The stairs, the stairs! Jill might fall—those damned heels, of hers—she couldn't walk home in that condition—Nora caught up her car keys and fled down the stairs, in a spasm of violent remorse.

But the side street, in the June afternoon sunlight, was empty. A man in a passing car looked curiously at Nora; shaking, she turned and went wearily into the house. At least, brutal as this was, it was final. And perhaps it was best.

CHAPTER 15

It began to rain that evening, and Nora and Kit drove back from the lake through a violent thunderstorm. They heard the telephone ringing inside the apartment but before Nora could get the door open, it died in a disappointed click.

Nora wondered if it was Jill; resolved, if it was, she would not talk to her. The least price they must pay was the sacrifice of their friendship...

At ten past eleven it rang again. Nora was in the shower; Kit, with a muttered imprecation on telephones in general, went to answer it.

After a minute he shouted "Nora!"

Barefoot, a towel around her middle, Nora came to the door.

"Do we have any way to reach Mack? Telegraph? Cable?"

"We could wire the mission, and it might get him in a day or two—" then it filtered through her consciousness.

"Jill?"

"She's in the hospital—" but Nora already had the phone away from him. "Hello? Is that you, Marg?"

"It's all right," Margaret said thinly, "she's not dead or anything, I've tried to call you four times. I don't know anything, the people here won't tell me. They just said I'd better get in touch with her family."

"But what happened, Marg? The baby?" It was almost two months too soon...

"I tell you, I don't know. I came in late, about nine-thirty, and she'd been there all afternoon. I couldn't get her to say much, she was in pretty bad shape. I called a cab and took her to the hospital, and they took her right upstairs."

Good God. So Jill had to be thrown into her lap again. Jill, Jill, Jill. "All right," she said, "I'll let her family know. Don't worry, Marg, they can look after premature babies nowadays. Why don't you go home and get some sleep? I'll go over in the morning."

Kit interrupted, "Tell her we'll be there in ten minutes."

"Kit, are you crazy?"

"Tell her. Then get some clothes on. Nora, for God's sake, don't you realize, we're the only people that poor kid has, in this town?" Before his blazing eyes, Nora repeated his words meekly, and hung up. Kit looked grim. "Have you and Jill had a row?"

"She made a scene, and for once I told her off. I offered to drive her home, and she walked out."

"And you let her go? Like that?"

"You've never seen Jill except when she was all sweetness and light, Kit. She has a hell of a temper."

"You're not particularly short on it yourself," Kit said coldly. "Get dressed."

Nora dropped the towel, standing naked before the mirror; then suddenly the full impact struck her.

Jill, oh Jill, what did I do to you?

Months ago, one of Jill's tantrums had frightened her into thinking the girl would miscarry. She had once attempted suicide...

Then "I'm an idiot," she said aloud, and started pulling on her clothes. Vic had foreseen, after all, that Jill might go into premature labor. Margaret? An excitable neurotic; probably Jill, always too stubborn to face facts, had refused to start for the hospital until she was in the last stages of labor. She probably got some morbid thrill out of frightening Margaret into fits.

But Pammy had died... lovely, innocent Pammy...

Buttoning her blouse with one hand, she went out to the telephone and dialed the hospital number. The switchboard girl informed her wearily that there was no Mrs. MacLellan in the maternity ward, and the receiver went click with a curt insolence. Nora stared at the black cradle, appalled; then, remembering—damn Jill anyhow—dialed again.

This time she was informed that Mrs. Bristol had delivered a daughter, three pounds, two ounces, at 10:39 p.m. She had to pull her hospital rank, however, before Barbara Quentin, on the maternity floor, took the phone and said, "Dr. Caine? Mrs. Bristol's condition is serious, but not critical; she is still in the delivery room. The baby's condition is extremely critical; they don't expect her to live more than a few minutes."

Nora thanked her, hung up and repeated it to Kit over a curious gap in her breathing. Kit looked shocked.

"I'll wire Mack. Outfits like that carry radio equipment, and ham operators will relay telegrams in emergencies. You'd better call the Bristols."

Nora looked for the Hartford number, which Jill had pencilled in the back of the directory; for the moment the sight of Jill's thin childish handwriting almost overwhelmed her. The mechanical voice said impatiently, "Long distance, long distance please."

She waited through the relays, the buzzing and clicks, and finally "Mrs. Alexander Bristol's residence."

"May I speak to Susan Bristol, please?" Susan had called Jill in the family crisis. Nora vaguely remembered a dark, elfin child of five or six, riding about on her tricycle; she would be in college now.

"Miss Susan is not at home. May I take a message?"

Nora was briefly dismayed. Jackie, the other sister, was married and living in Pittsburgh. Did she dare talk to Jill's mother—an old woman, bitterly prejudiced, and— the doctor remembered—a cardiac case who must not be subjected to sudden shocks?

"This is a friend of her sister Jill—Cassandra—Mrs. MacLellan. Please may I speak to some member of the family? Who is this?"

"This is Allen, Mrs. Bristol's housekeeper. Mrs. Bristol has been very ill, and has gone to bed. Is it important enough to disturb her?"

Nora was tempted to say it was a matter of life and death, but her professional exactness shied away from melodrama. "It is important, yes, but I don't wish to alarm Mrs. Bristol."

A voice said on another extension, "Then you would do better to tell me, rather than leaving me to guess the worst. I'll take it up here, Allen. This is Martha Bristol speaking. Who is this, please?" It was the remembered voice; cool, condescending; poised.

Shrinking from the memory, Nora began to say "Mrs. Christopher Ellersen" then, facing down the old memory and fear, set her teeth against them.

"Perhaps you remember me, Mrs. Bristol. Before I married, I was Nora Caine. Jill stayed with me for some months this spring. I have just been notified by the hospital that Jill's baby was born prematurely, about half an hour ago. They don't expect the baby to live."

"Nora Caine," repeated the collected voice. "Yes, I remember you very well, Nora. You were a dear friend of my Pamela. Please tell me about Cassandra—you call her Jill? I can never remember. We—" the cool facade of the voice broke. "We lost our Pamela that way, and I've been so frightened for Cassandra. Please tell me about her, Nora."

As if a sixteen-year-old shock had swept over her, Nora sank beside the phone. Literally she could not speak. Then the sound of a drawn breath over the wires, a sound of terror, brought her back from a shamed adolescent to a mature professional woman; and she forgot herself and began to think about someone else.

"You mustn't be alarmed," she said quickly. "Only, as her husband is so far away, the hospital authorities wanted to notify her closest relatives—"

And suddenly it swept over her again. Her husband is my stepbrother! Jill is my sister-in-law—I am her family! I have every right to worry about her! I have a right to—to love her!

Gently, she repeated what the hospital had told her, adding, "She isn't my patient, and I haven't seen her yet but the doctor attending her is a good friend of mine' and she's in excellent hands." After a few more reassuring phrases, she hung up, deathly weary and exhausted. Had Martha Bristol wholly forgotten why Nora Caine had been dropped from their circle? Had Pammy finally made her mother understand how innocent it had been?

Or—after so many tragedies and burdens, had Martha Bristol finally come to see it as a small thing? To remember only that Nora was a dear and close friend of a daughter who had died?

Or had it never mattered at all? Had it been a small minor crisis, merely climaxing a summer of Pammy's escapades, and the words of Pammy's father simply a side issue, part of punishment for Pammy?

* * *

Shortly after two, Vic Demorino came through the door of the doctor's lounge and dropped beside Nora, lighting a cigarette.

"She'll make it. We've got the hemorrhaging stopped—that was the important thing. The baby never had a chance." Vic made a gesture of despair. "Of course, she came in too late. If I'd had her here five hours earlier, we might have been able to stop it. Do you know—had she had a shock?"

"Not that I know," said Nora dully. "She left my house about one-thirty."

"And she was all right then? But of course, she must have been or you'd have known it."

Nora said, feeling Kit's eyes, "She was upset. We had a—a female sort of quarrel. She took offense at something I said, and walked out in a sulk."

"No, no, I wouldn't think—you didn't get into a hair-pulling match, did you? It takes a whale of a shock to the nervous system, to bring on labor. If she'd had a narrow escape from being run down by a truck. Or her husband left her for a blonde. And even then—I've known women who had their husbands or other children killed before their eyes, late in pregnancy, and it didn't bring on labor. Nobody really knows. Anyhow, she's alive, and there'll be other kids. You can look in, Nora, but she's doped to the eyebrows. Won't wake up much before noon. Poor kid can't her husband be here?" He sighed, stood up, and offered Kit his hand.

Nora's self-disgust was complete. She had been more obtuse than any woman, let alone a doctor, had a right to be. She had shouted at Jill—and Jill was sick, not temperamental, she was sick—screamed at her, shaken her, driven her from the house.

If she'd been in the hospital five hours earlier, they could have helped her. If I hadn't quarrelled with her—if she'd stayed all day, I'd have known. I knew she was feeling sick, and I was so full of my own problems, I didn't try to find out why, or I'd have had her in the hospital—oh God, I might as well have thrown her downstairs!

"Darling, don't." Kit bent over her. "Jill's all right. Let me take you home."

But when the lights were out, the false dawn graying the windows, she lay tossing until Kit said huskily, "Come over here to me, sweetheart."

"This hits you hard, Nora, I know, but it could be worse. Jill's young, she and Mack can have a dozen kids yet." His hands stole out to caress the contours of her body. "Damn it, Leonora, don't pull any tricks like that on me, will you? I'd rather never have any kids than live through a night like this, if it was you."

She pressed herself to him, not speaking. The thought of Jill was agony, and his hands aroused nothing in her; so that when his arms tightened, insistent, for the first time Nora pulled away.

"Kit, no—no, I can't—please—"

He was nice about it; but as she fell asleep Nora was torn by a dozen emotions, and they all felt exactly the same; sorrow, guilt, and above all, blurring them all, a tortured and passionate shame.

CHAPTER 16

There had been no word from Mack; only Kit, Nora, Margaret, and Susan Bristol were present when, simply and without rites, Mary Bristol MacLellan was buried, never having lived.

Nora told herself, again and again, she was not responsible. Perhaps, except for the quarrel, she might have persuaded Jill to go to the hospital sooner. But Vic had foreseen this. It wasn't her fault.

Yet she suffered from the sight of Jill, white and shrunken as the front-page picture in the HARTFORD TIMES a year ago.

Four days after the funeral, her doorbell rang; Nora ran down to the vestibule, then stepped back in surprise; for Mack was standing there, with Jill.

He said, "I just got in this morning," and after a minute Nora managed to collect her thoughts. "Come in."

Kit rose and came, with his uneven walk, to meet them. "Hello there, Mack, it's been ages." They shook hands warmly.

Jill was wearing a dress Nora had never seen before, airy rose-colored folds enclosing a waist that seemed tinier than ever; gloves and pert hat and pointed shoes all the same fastidious white. Her close curls had grown to shoulder length. She might have been Pammy standing there, fresh and spoilt and pretty in one of her organdy party dresses.

Mack turned and swept Nora into a bearish hug. He seemed bigger and shaggier than ever in his light tropical-tan suit. "Why, Mack, you're black as an Indian!"

"I had the beard hacked off in Mexico city—afraid Jill wouldn't know me," he said, releasing her. Nora, self-conscious before the unlovely scowl on Kit's face, stepped back and led them to seats, her thoughts beginning to go round again on their turntable.

"From what you wired me, Kit, I expected to find Jill dying—God, I nearly went crazy—I had to hitch-hike down the coast to Lima, catching rides in the Mission car, a jeep—it took me five days. I'll tell you all about it some day. I caught a plane in Lima, but there was a storm over the Gulf and they set down in Panama for thirty hours—"

Nora flinched when she saw his eyes on Kit; even Nora, by now almost unaware of Kit's lameness, was newly conscious of it before Mack's bursting vitality. "How long can you stay, Mack?"

"Well, I told Harry that if there was anything seriously wrong with Jill, he could go to hell. Otherwise, I'm supposedly on leave to handle his chores in the States. Fly to the West coast and see our backers, arrange for storing and cataloguing the stuff that's coming in by sea, and he wants me to buy or charter a small plane for the mountain work. We're going to be there another three years—the place is a gold mine. Jill's going to love it."

"But," Jill said, "I'm not sure I want to camp out in the jungle for three years."

Mack laughed, not taking her seriously. He and Kit started talking about airplanes which might be suitable for the expedition, and Nora said, "I've got to go down to the office for a while. But don't go away."

Jill followed her into the bedroom.

"Can't I ride down with you?"

Nora hesitated. "All right. If you want to." She watched the girl sitting at her dressing-table, freshening her lipstick, her mouth like a fresh pink bud.

"Jill," she said at last, "I know you'll never forgive me—"

"Forgive you for what?" Jill put down her lipstick. "Don't worry. I'm not going to say anything to Kit. That's what you were really worrying about, isn't it?"

Nora heard herself make a horrible strangled sound. "Oh, God, Jill," she said, and dropped her face in her hands, leaning against the wall in blinded, tearing agony. "Oh, God." Dimly she heard Jill rise and come to her; then Jill's arms were pulling her round, holding her around the waist.

"Nora—look at me—please, please—"

Once Nora had bent to lift what she thought was a scrap of dust from the floor, and in her hand the faded ball had fluttered, beating convulsive wings against her startled palm, so she cried out in fright before she realized it was a living moth. Just so terrifying was the thing that leaped to life within her now. She lifted Jill's face and kissed her on the mouth. Jill clung to her, eyes closed; then swayed and lost her balance, and Nora caught her, alarmed.

"You aren't fit to be on your feet. Stay here."

"Oh, no, no—let me come with you," Jill begged, "I can't stand it—"

Mack and Kit were still talking about crosswinds and stall-out speed and hardly raised their eyes when the women left. Nora turned the car into the park.

"Nor, what is it, what have we done to each other?"

Nora swallowed. "I don't know. The way I feel now—" forcibly, she stopped herself. "Darling, Kit needs me, he trusts me, I—I'd feel better about deceiving him with a man, than this. And—and it wouldn't last. Try to remember, darling, these things don't last."

I hope to God they don't, at least...

"Darling, I've got to see Cranford. Wait for me, and we'll go somewhere for a drink, where we can talk."

"Where," asked Jill bitterly, "Flora's?"

She refused to come upstairs with Nora. Nora, discussing her business with young Cranford, mentioned that later in the year she might need a maternity leave, and the young doctor laughed:

"I ought to have expected that. After all, with your husband home all day, what else is there to do?"

Nora bent her head, angry at the realization that most doctors would not have talked this way to most women; angry, too, at herself for reacting. Six months ago she might have made such a remark herself.

Jarred by it, she decided on an irrevocable step.

"Look here, Andy; if you want this practice, I'll let you have it."

He blinked, his boyish face bewildered. "You can't be serious. It will be years before I'm in shape to take over this kind of a set-up."

"I'm not that old," she said dryly, "and if I didn't think you could handle it, I wouldn't offer." This would also deal with Kit's repressed, but perceptible, jealousy and resentment of Vic. He knew they had been lovers.

"I'll probably have a child to look after, and I'd rather not be tied until I'm sure where my husband wants to settle. Pay me what you can raise—I'll settle for the price of the office furniture if you can't do any better."

"You aren't giving up practice?"

Why, she thought incredulously, the kid doesn't approve of me; I'm not a woman, I'm just a doctor trying to get out of an obligation!

She said testily, "Certainly not, I just have to get permanently located. Do you want it, or not?"

"Oh, I do. Good Lord, a chance like this doesn't come along every day." He gulped. "I mean—it's awfully generous of you, doctor. I hate to take advantage—"

"Don't worry about that." She cut him short. "We can talk about the business end of it tomorrow. Don't worry, I won't change my mind."

As she left the office, she was thinking; now she had slammed down a barricade against the past. She would practice wherever Kit wanted to live.

Without asking, she drove Jill to a quiet restaurant where they could order drinks. She said finally, "Jill, there's something I must tell you. No, dear, let me finish this time. I think I'm going to have a baby."

Jill did some silent mental arithmetic. "It must have happened right away."

"I think so." That first night. "Kit's almost wild. It's the best thing that could have happened to him, I—thought I'd be deliriously happy, myself."

"And you're not?"

"Not especially. That ought to be obvious."

"Did you know—that day?"

"I'd just begun to suspect. That was what I was trying to tell you," Nora said, "that, and nothing else."

Jill picked up her drink and made a face. "I don't know why I let you order me a daiquiri. I despise them." She drank it anyhow.

"Nora, Mack thinks I'm going to Peru with him. Nor—do you know what was the worst of it, in the hospital, the thing I couldn't face? Knowing that I—I never wanted a baby at all. I'm—I'm not glad she's dead," she gulped, "I—they let me see her. She was like a little white baby-doll. Did you know they baptized her? They baptized her Mary. I'd have called her Pam if she'd lived. She had funny little ears—"

"Darling, don't—"

"The nurses and the nuns were so nice to me, and there I was knowing I'd never wanted her, and now I was free, I didn't have to marry Mack—" she wiped her dripping eyes with a paper napkin.

"I don't want to go with Mack. I—don't want any man."

Under the table Nora took Jill's hand; not bruisingly but very, very gently. "Sweet—listen. You can't possibly know now how you'll feel about Mack. Or men."

Jill wrenched the words out. "Since you—since you first—the whole idea of sleeping with a man makes me sick. Any man."

"Jill, you were pregnant; now that Mack's back—no, listen, dear, can't you take my word for something this once? My word as a doctor, even? Mack realized—if he doesn't, Vic will tell him, or I will—there can't possibly be any sexual relations now. Not for weeks."

"But—but I don't even want to think about it."

"Jill, give yourself time. It will be different, when you're well again, believe me."

"How do you know what it will be like for me?"

Nora drove her nails into her own palm. "Listen, Jill. Even if we're both unhappy—" but that had slipped out against her will, and she bit it off.

"Nora, are you unhappy too?"

"How can I possibly be happy about it? Do you think I like hurting you? But if we try to drag this out, we'll keep hurting each other, and Kit, and Mack—even if you hate me for it, I have to say—"

"I couldn't hate you, Nor. You know I—"

"No." Nora cut her off before she could say it. "Jill, Jill, if you're smart, the minute you leave—you'll marry Mack. Tonight. Fly down to Peru with him. Have another baby the minute they'll let you. Oh, darling, be smart—" she reached for Jill's hand again, then suddenly pulled it away and closed her eyes.

"No," she said, "No, I'm not hysterical. But—I'm begging you. Go marry Mack. Forget you ever knew me.

For God's sake," she almost shouted, though the cry tight in her tight throat, could not be heard two feet away and Jill had to bend forward to hear her, "for God's sake get out while you can!"

CHAPTER 17

Gray lines of rain were streaming down the windows. Kit laid aside his magazine as someone knocked at the door.

"I wonder if that's Jill? We haven't seen her for couple of weeks, have we?"

Nora rose and went toward the door. She had see Jill only once since Mack left for the coast—Vic Demorino had advised Jill against making the trip—and that troublingly. Answering an emergency call deep in the slum quarter, late one night, she had waited almost an hour for an ambulance to take her patient to a hospital; afterward, finding herself within a block of Flora's, she had gone for a drink.

She had sat alone at a corner table, slowly unwinding from the long tension; then, looking up across intervening tables, she saw Jill, with Margaret Sheppard. They were close together, their backs turned to Nora—neither of them had seen her.

A woman in a T-shirt and jeans came toward Nor asking gravely, "Lonesome, kid?" She was slightly drunk. Nora said a quiet "No, thanks," rose and went out. But the sight haunted her.

She had accused Ramona of warping Margaret's natural bent—when Margaret was alone and disillusioned by bad marriage. Had she done the same to Jill?

She told herself angrily; Margaret liked the place, Jill might have come at Margaret's request, to ward off unattached girls. Or because they wanted a drink. She didn't have to jump to conclusions! But she knew—none better—that loneliness drove people to doing strange things. She herself had slammed the door against Jill, refusing even to discuss it. How could she blame Jill?

It was not Jill, however, at the apartment door, but Mack. His hair was wet and curling; he had on white canvas trousers and a faded but immaculate blue chambray shirt.

"Hi, Mack," said Kit with lazy good nature, "When did you get in from the coast? Get us some beer, Nora."

Nora turned; then hesitated, rebellious against Kit's easy assumption of command.

I shouldn't feel this way, Kit's got the right to order me—to ask me for something. But before Mack— "Suppose you ask first if he wants it? Mack doesn't like beer." She brought beer for Kit and Scotch on ice for Mack, and opened a bottle of ginger ale for herself; but her triumph was as flat in her mouth as the taste of the soft drink, as Mack took a chair beside Kit.

"Hear you're moving?"

Kit nodded. "We decided to settle in the country—build up a business outside the rat race. Build split-levels instead of skyscrapers. Nora, did the mailman come?"

"I saw him downstairs in the hall."

"My license photostat ought to have come. Run down and see if it's there, will you?"

Mack rose to his feet, saying "Let me go," but Nora was already on the stairs. There were two envelopes addressed to Kit, and one for her, on the letterhead of Pearson Associates. Hardly worth while opening that. She tore it idly across, and stood, stunned:

Type; FRIEDMAN

Specimen subject; Ellersen, Mrs. Leonora

Results; negative for pregnancy.

It tore, and she realized that her steady hands were shaking. She had been so sure... she had told Kit. He had been so proud—now she would have to destroy that joy and pride. The old guilt tore at her:

If you don't mind risking your chance of ever carrying a healthy child to full term...

Nonsense, she thought angrily, I simply wasn't pregnant at all, it's right there in the report—but the pain did not go away. I've failed Kit. She buried her face in her hands, unwilling to go back and face him with it. At last she put it dress pocket and went back upstairs. Kit stretched out his hands for the envelopes, but did not interrupt himself;

"—so then old Byrd called Nora and asked if she'd be willing to take over when he retires—it can't be more than two or three years now. Well, of course, that was ideal. We can live out there—" he looked at her with a smile so full of love that she could not face him. "I was telling Mack about the kid, Leonora."

She swallowed. She could not, before Mack, destroy it by saying, It was a mistake, I jumped the gun.

"Hey, that's great, sis," Mack said softly. "So you beat us, after all. Poor little Jill." Then his face sobered and he put down his drink.

"Nora, I'm worried about Jill. Remember, I talked to you once before about her?"

Yes, and you let me in for the worst mess of my life.

She said cautiously, "Have you thought about this, Mack? Maybe she's just decided that she doesn't want to marry you."

"But she couldn't do that—not after the baby, and everything—look, Nora, maybe I'm a heel. But can't you understand? As far as I'm concerned, she's my wife!"

"You're not a heel," Nora interrupted, "Jill knew perfectly well what she was doing. But if she knew what she was doing then, you've got to admit she knows now."

Mack glowered. "Nora, whatever you might think, I don't make a habit of unloading my personal problems on other people. But Jill's not like most women, and neither are you, so I figured you might understand her. I'm not asking you to violate any confidences, but can't you give me some notion of what's going on inside that stubborn little nut of hers? Why won't she marry me? Is she angry at something I've done?"

"I don't see why she should be." Shocked at herself, Nora felt a queer thrill of pride. Instantly it was gone, leaving an ebb-tide wash of shame—surely it was nothing to be proud of, that Jill wanted no one else? But it had been there; the flare of jealousy at the thought of Mack possessing Jill, the leap of pride that Jill refused him.

Mack brooded, "Some women get funny after having a baby. Do you think that's Jill's trouble?"

"Probably. But not the way you think." Nora wondered why her voice was so cold. "Maybe she's just realized; not having your baby, she's not obligated to marry you unless it suits her, and it doesn't."

"But what can I do?"

Nora felt she must cut this short at any cost. "Mack, I'm neither God nor a marriage counselor. Jill's of age and knows her own mind. There's nothing I could do, even if I were willing to get mixed up in it. Which—forgive me—I'm not."

Kit was standing by the window, looking into the streaming rain. He turned and said harshly, "Mack, can I put in my two cents?"

"Go ahead."

"You say you think of Jill as your wife. But you treated her like a tramp. No wonder she resents it!"

Nora opened her mouth to protest. What did Kit know about Jill? But Kit scowled and Nora realized this had turned into man talk and she would be ignored if she spoke.

"I know, Kit. I ought to have talked her into marrying me, or else made damn sure I wouldn't leave her pregnant. But if she throws me over—it would serve me right, but I couldn't take it."

"Did it ever occur to you that she's afraid? Afraid you only think you ought to—what's that phrase—make an honest woman out of her? She won't be rushed—"

"Rushed? She's had eight months!"

"During which she was pregnant, and had to carry all that guilt and shame alone—"

Nora could not keep silent. She felt as if she were being stripped naked herself. "Kit, that's not true. Jill doesn't swallow that Puritan hogwash about sex and guilt! She's a modern, sensible girl!"

"Modern or not and sensible or not," said Kit with a skeptical shrug, "she'd still be upset about having an illegitimate child. Especially when she doesn't have the baby to—to make it worth while. But she needs you. Mack, whether she knows it or not. You want some free advice? Okay. Take off the pressure. Let her come to you."

"And suppose she doesn't?"

"It's none of my business, but you might better lose her that way than get her the other. If you bully her into marrying you, she'll always remember it was something you wanted. Let her realize that she's marrying you—not because you pressured her into it, but because it was something she wanted."

When Mack had gone, chastened but hopeful, Nora said "What got into you? None of it was Mack's fault!"

Kit laughed. "Funny. You really don't think it was his fault—do you?"

"How on earth could it be?"

"Leonora, whenever a woman's been seduced—"

"Oh, lord, Kit!"

"Even the modern woman, who has deleted the word from the dictionary; when a woman's been seduced, some man did it."

Suddenly Nora was fiercely angry. "I suppose you have it all figured out that the men I had before you, took advantage of my innocence."

Kit flinched. "No need to bring that up. I told you before we were married; I don't give a damn whether I'm the first or the fifty-first, as long as I'm the last. Took advantage of you? Yes, damn it, and you made it easy for them by swallowing all that single-standard crap men invented to seduce women with."

It was too much. "You make me sick," she shouted, almost incoherent. "That dark-ages hokum—"

"Here, here, here, hold on!" He held her until she stopped struggling, his thin fingers like steel clamps on her wrist. "Don't you ever raise your voice to me again, Leonora, I mean that. If you weren't going to have a baby, I would take you over my knee and give you the paddling of your life!" The words made Nora cringe. "I won't have women yelling at me!"

"Kit, no man has ever had the right—"

"No. That is obvious from your tone. No, keep still, we are going to have this out—there is only one man in this family. Me."

"Kit, I won't have this! We are two adults—two equals. You have no right to speak as if I were a naughty child to be punished if I disobey!"

"We are two equals," he said, his mouth set, "not two men. As long as you speak to me as a wife should speak to her husband, I will treat you with all the respect and courtesy you could possibly desire. I have fixed ideas about respecting my wife. But man to man, Nora, I'm the better man and I can prove it. So don't try to compete that way."

He kissed her hair, tenderly. She rubbed her punished wrists, and he picked them up and kissed them. "I have only one more thing to say, Nora, and then we'll drop it for good. I love you, and I trust you. The past is past, and nothing could change the way I feel."

She drew a little away from him. "Kit, there's something I must tell you—"

"You don't have to tell me anything," he said.

"No. It's not what you'd think." She looked down into the street, where the small drops were still splattering into the puddles. "It's—I know why Jill won't marry Mack, Kit."

"Some other man?"

"No man, Kit. It's—" Nora bent her head. This was it, and she simply didn't know how to say it. "It's—my fault. It's because of me."

"Yours? How? You're too sensitive, Nora. You're not responsible for the whim of Jill's, certainly—" Kit stopped abruptly and Nora winced before the sudden comprehension in his face. Then, slowly, he nodded.

"So that was it, all along. Yes, that was it."

"Kit—"

"Darling, come here!" Kit gathered his wife in his arms. "You can't imagine how relieved—you don't know what I went through this winter, thinking it was a man—I'm not worried about Jill. Not as a rival."

She should have expected his refusal to take it seriously. She might have done it herself, a year ago. "Kit, do you even know what I'm trying to tell you?"

"Sure. You're saying Jill's queer."

She flinched. "If she is, it's my fault, Kit."

"I doubt that like hell. And as far as you and I are concerned, it couldn't matter less, could it? How do you feel about Jill now?"

"Perfectly miserable," she said, and choked.

"I don't mean that." Kit's eyes were blue and bleak as the bottom of the sky. "Well?"

"I—" Nora tried to force herself to go on, but words came. "I—I can't."

"Okay, forget it. I'm not curious." She saw the shadow of pain, like the darkness flying in the wake of a cloud, move across his face. "I'm not trying to force you—I said you didn't have to tell me anything. I—I think I could go for some of that Scotch myself, about now."

She fixed him a drink and he sipped, his hands not at ease on the glass.

"Reason I asked—there are pretty rough penalties for that stuff in the service. It still flares up, now and then. Usually just a—well, a flare-up." He frowned, searching for words, turning the glass round and round in his hands. "I mean, things happen. Like, some kid comes to pass the time of night and after you've batted the breeze a while you run out of things to say. And you find yourself thinking you'd like to put your arms around him—I'm not saying this very well—and you end up giving him a slap on the back and telling him to get the hell out, you've got work to do. Or you and some guy get stuck in the northeast corner of nowhere, nothing to do but get on each other's nerves and wait for all hell to break loose outside. Only two ways to get rid of all you've got stored up inside, and usually you wind up slugging him instead. But you can't help wondering if the other guy is thinking the same way." Kit stared into space, not even in the same room with Nora any more. "And sometimes he is."

He went on turning the glass round and round in his fingers. When he looked up again, his face was haggard, as if he had been on a very long journey.

"The thing is, Nora—well, I've been there. When things get rough, you—grab on to whoever's handiest. My grandfather—ran a line of fishing boats up in Maine—had a saying. I used to think about it—went like this. Every boat's best off in its own drydock. But if the weather gets rough enough, any boat will put into a stranger's harbor." He managed to grin.

"When are you leaving for Mayfield?"

"I can't go, Kit. I've got to see this through with Jill—Kit, what's the matter?"

"Nothing. But that isn't the way." He spoke slowly, hunting for words. "I'm not asking you not to see Jill again. Do what you have to. But I want you to go to Mayfield, just as you planned, tonight."

"I suppose," she flared, "that unless I do, you'll beat me!" She did not know why anger had come back to replace her gratitude for his understanding.

"No. It's too important for that, Leonora. Let's just say—I want you to do it because you're my wife, and I asked you to, and because your marriage is more important to you than—well, than Jill."

Nora had not faced this decision before. Now it lay before her, clearcut and inevitable. It was not so simple as a choice between Kit and Jill, either. It was a choice as to whether or not she could give up her cherished independence.

She sat staring at Kit. She knew she loved him, but in a curious way hated him too. Oh, no, there was no peaceful, conventional happy ending before them. It would be more like a battle to the death, if she chose Kit.

She had spent twenty years learning to dominate her surroundings. Everyone who would not allow himself to be swept into her ruthless track had been quickly swept aside. Pammy. Les Rannock. Vic and Ramona when they had outlived their usefulness to her. Jill; cruelly, without compunction, she had tried to cut Jill away. Was Kit to be the latest victim?

At least I'm not pregnant. Like I told Mack; now she doesn't have to marry him. I'm free too...

Kit's voice was gentle. "You think I'm inconsistent. I told Mack he should let Jill make up her own mind. I'm telling you that you've got to let me make yours up. But I'm not telling you what to do, Nora. I'm asking if you'll let me tell you. You've got to surrender Nora. If you can't—you don't need me. And if you don't need me, sooner or later you won't love me."

Nora got up without answering and went for her raincoat. She took her medical bag and opened it, slipping into her pocket the bankbook Mack had given her, months ago. She had never spoken of it. In response to a point-blank question, Jill had told her that she had money enough to see her through her confinement. But the bankbook had begun this, and now it must end it.

Kit started up, as she turned to the door; but Nora, at the last breath of her endurance, said, "No, Kit. Don't ask me. I'll call—or I'll come back—or I'll call you from Mayfield. But if you ask now, there's only one answer. If there's any pity in you, give me time."

He whispered, "All the time you want, Leonora. Like I said to Mack; I'd rather lose you, than get you on the wrong terms. But whatever you decide, it's for keeps, because we'll never go through this again."

He turned and walked into the bedroom, and Nora knew he had fallen there and was lying, as he lay so often, face down, his arms hiding his face, shutting out all but his pain and his pride and his manhood. And she had no right to follow. Numbly, she went out into the rain.

CHAPTER 18

The hotel desk clerk told her that Mr. MacLellan had checked out, and Nora went up the stairs with her heart pounding, not yet knowing why she had come—excerpt, perhaps, to fling Mack's trust in his face. Why he thrown Jill at her?

She rapped at the door; he opened it, and looked at her, startled. "Nora? Come in." He drew her inside.

"Why, your hair's all wet—what are you doing out in rain? Kid, is something wrong?" His face creased with sunburn, leaned over her with anxious gentleness; solid, comforting, letting her be herself. She buried her in the front of his shirt, forgetting anger, forgetting everything. The delayed misery of her new knowledge, the tension of choice, were tearing at her.

She had failed as a woman. She had failed everywhere and everyone. She had destroyed Jill. She had hurt Kit. She had betrayed her trust to Mack—"

"That chair's hard. Here, sit on the bed," he said, don't talk if you don't want to. You look like you could a drink." He turned away, giving her time to collect herself, and poured it into a thick-rimmed hotel glass. But as she put it to her lips he said anxiously, "Is it all right to drink now? You're a doctor, you ought to know, but—"

"I ought to know a lot of things," she said bitterly, put the glass to her lips and drained it. Mack had poured at least a double shot; she felt it burn in her stomach and hit her quickly; but she no longer cared. She held out the glass and reluctantly he poured her another.

"I guess you know when to stop."

Suddenly it poured out of her. "For God's sake don't treat me like a fragile little expectant mother," she exploded, and drank again, shaking. "I'm not pregnant—I couldn't even have that! I just found out—Kit doesn't know—I don't know how I'm going to face telling him," she said, strangled with pain. Mack dropped the glass and sprang toward her. He caught her close and held her; he almost rocked her.

"Nora, Nora. You poor baby, poor kid! You love him so much—that makes all the difference?"

She had lost all caution between misery and the drinks. "I don't know if I love him or hate him! He wants—I don't know if I can stand it to be just the part of me that Kit wants, just his wife, not a person—I'm not making sense—"

"Oh, yes you are," he soothed. "I know, I know. Neither of us have much luck, Nor. First you get that goddamn conceited Rannock kid who wanted to tie you up with a houseful of brats right away, and I get that Rhoda girl who wanted a gray flannel suit walking like a man. And then when we do want to be tied down, I get a girl who won't marry me, and you—" he spread his hands helplessly. "We're a pair of suckers, Nora. We yell for independence, and when the time comes when we want a family, we can't even manage that—"

He leaned down and kissed her. Gently, his hands cradling her cheeks, he kissed her again; this time not a brother's kiss of comfort, but a man's kiss; hard, virile, demanding. His arms went roughly around her.

In disbelieving shock, Nora felt the old love surge up, the never-forgotten passionate hunger. She knew she was drunk, but it didn't matter.

This was what she had wanted. Mack, the beloved, the one she loved best, had pushed her away, rejected her; all these years she had fenced herself from a similar rejection by being, like Mack, strong; masculine; self-sufficient. Mack rejected her; and she had never again been sure of herself as a woman. Now, wide-eyed and shaken as the child she had been them, she lay looking up into his eyes, fear swept away by alcohol and her own inner conflicts.

He muttered, "I don't give a damn what—" and again the heat and hunger in his mouth silenced them both. His big hands moved on her.

"Why didn't I know? All these years, Nor, I've been looking for you. Someone who wouldn't crowd me—I was afraid to treat you like a woman, so I tried to make you over—"

She was passive in his arms; he pushed her back on the bed, murmuring, "I haven't touched a woman since I left Jill in Mayfield..."

She had known it would be like that for him; he was not a man for casual affairs, and they went deep when they happened. She could feel the long hunger and frustration in him, making his hands tremble. "Nor," he said, "Nor, do you—want it like this?"

Swiftly, he began to unfasten her dress. The rain beat hard on the windows, and his face, pale and tense, bent above her. Suddenly, a spasm of shock and disgust swept through her, a wave of revulsion. The pendulum, pulled too far, sprang to the other extreme.

"No," she said hoarsely, "No—I'm drunk, but—no, Mack!" She felt stripped to the humiliated roots of her being. Desire had died in her, leaving only shame.

So Mack was just like them all. All they wanted was to get you on your back beneath them, solve all your problems with sex... prove themselves on you—

She forgot that she, herself, had begun this. With that vivid imagery she saw Jill's face, raised in love and surrender. To Mack, to Kit, she might be simply a woman to be conquered and calmed with sex. To Jill—to Pammy—she was the strong commanding force in herself. Buttoning her dress with scornful swift fingers, she shook off Mack's worried hand, only half aware of his dismay.

"Nor— Nor, I'm sorry I lost my head—don't look like that—" but she hardly heard. So he, so imperious when she lay beneath him like a yielding woman, was now worried and whimpering? She pushed by him, disregarding his frantic "Nora, for God's sake, you're sick—" and walked out, down the hall, into the cold rain again.

* * *

She never knew where she walked in the next hour. After a long time, cold and wet, soaked through, she found herself standing outside a neon door and the spilling noise of a jukebox; Flora's. As if waking from a somnambulist's nightmare, Nora pushed the swinging doors and went in.

The smell of stale beer and whisky greeted her. The women crowded at the bar and the tables might almost have been the same woman. She gave her order. The brainstorm which had sent her out into the rain was quieting; she was capable now of surprise at her own behavior, and of dismay and distress. How had she come to Mack's arms? The surge of revulsion was still with her; the distaste at showing herself a woman, pliant, vulnerable.

As a woman I'm not so much. I can't even have a baby.

She watched a tall woman in slacks dancing with a pretty little fair-haired girl of twenty or so. She knew a curious fellow-feeling.

I wasn't woman enough to compete with Pammy as a girl. In seducing her I proved myself as much a man as Mack...

Homosexual. She tried the word over, softly, to herself. Was that what she really wanted, then? She had not wanted Mack. Even Mack, whom she had loved so long. She picked up her drink. The comfortable blur of emotion was wearing off, growing sharp-edged; she wanted to blur it again.

Flora Danbury, her raddled cheeks pale under the rouge stopped by her table. "Why, Doctor Caine, nice to see you. You're getting to be one of our regulars," she said familiarly.

Nora set down her drink untasted. She managed a nod, murmured something about a hurry, and went out. The chilly rain in the streets cleared her thoughts again.

No. Even if she were irretrievably homosexual, she wouldn't find the answer in Flora's, surrounded by desperate women trying to find, in the phony warmth of a drink, the answer to problems they couldn't solve outside, in the cold rain. The courage she might find there was a false courage that would evaporate with the hangover.

Whatever her choice, her life must be lived outside the small enclosed world in which confessed lesbians found self-centered happiness.

Flora, calling her doctor, had recalled her to herself. She was always, primarily, first and forever, a doctor. She could never go there as one of them. Only as a tourist; an outsider. She might be a misfit among wives; but she was a worse misfit in the closed circle of those who made a career of being lesbians.

If she had destroyed normal life, normal love for Jill, then she had some responsibility and she would accept it; but if that was her choice, she and Jill would have to make a world outside the easy one of lesbian bars and bright talk about unconventionality.

She found herself standing at the top of the stairway in the Lenox apartments. Under oath she could not have told how she had come there. Margaret came out into the hall, and Nora blinked as if surfacing after a very long dive. "Marg, is it you?"

"Of course it's me. I do live here, you know." Margaret looked at her sharply. "Nora, what's the matter? You're soaked through. Come inside—I was just going out, but I'll stay if you like. Or—was it Jill you came to see?"

Nora drew a careful breath. She said, "Thanks, Marg. I—I think I do have to see Jill alone. If you don't mind. But don't let us drive you out of your own home, we'll go out somewhere—"

But where? Flora's? Is that the only place left?

"No, Nora. Whatever this is, you don't have to take it out on the streets. That's the worst thing, having no place—don't you think I remember when neither my family or Ramona's would have the other one under their roof?" She laid her hand lightly on Nora's arm. "I'll be out till midnight. You can count on that."

Before Nora could speak, she had gone on down the stairs, closing the street door behind her. Nora tasted something curiously salt and sour in her mouth. The feel of being on a swaying pendulum had quieted, now, to a great ticking, as if her steps were vibrating inside a clock. Arrhythmic tachycardia, usually neurotic in origin. Tension symptoms, connected with emotional shock, usually subside spontaneously without medication. She walked through the door Margaret had left open.

"Jill, are you there?"

Jill came out of her bedroom. She stared at Nora in amazement, and, as Margaret had done, said, "You're soaked through!" She came and took the raincoat from Nora. "Let me hang that up for you."

Nora surrendered it, and Jill fussed with spreading it out on a chair to dry. "I guess you know Mack's in town again?"

"I suppose he came straight to you—Nora, I'm not fit to marry him. He wouldn't want me if he knew."

"Jill, listen to me," Nora said, "Do you want to marry Mack? Or not? What do you really want?"

Jill twisted her fingers. "I don't know," she said at last, and Nora was startled—yes, and disappointed.

What did I expect? Did I expect Jill to throw herself into my arms again and say she only wanted me? Yes, yes, I'm a fine one to be asking Jill what she wants, when I don't know what I want myself!

Jill said suddenly, "But I'm a fine hostess, I must say! I lived in your house for months, and when you come to mine, I don't even offer you a cup of tea! Or would you rather have a coke? There are some in the icebox."

"Nothing, thanks." Nora realized with relief that she was at last completely sober again. She was surprised at Jill. She had never associated these domestic details with the girl. It occurred to her that there were large sections of Jill's personality wholly unknown to her; she had never seen Jill in a normal state, only driven by strange storms. From the day she had walked into Nora's office—pregnant, afraid, driven by the memory of betrayals—Jill had been haunted. What was the real Jill like? She felt a seething ache to know what Jill might be, free of these storms. The pendulum weighted; dipped.

Kit, Mack—they see only a woman to build her life around them. Kit loves me, he wants me to do the work I was trained for—provided I don't neglect him. It will never occur to him—that the part of me he owns, isn't all there is to know about me!

"Jill," she said, "I'm going to Mayfield tonight. Alone—without Kit, that is. Some things have changed. I've found out that I'm not pregnant, and I suppose—" it came hard to say it, but she said it, clearly, facing Jill, "I suppose it's best, because it leaves me free until I've completely settled what I want. So I understand how you felt the other day."

It hung between them; a half offer, an understanding. Nora held herself back by force from offering or demanding more. Strangely, it was Kit's words that came to her; a stranger's harbor. I don't want that. If Jill chooses me just as an easy escape from Mack, I don't want her. I don't want her to—drift to me because it will avoid solving a problem. The storm's over, and one way or the other, the anchor's going up. Together or apart, we must go out under our own steam.

With a word, she knew, she could bind Jill to her forever. That would be the easy way.

"Nora, I—are you saying what I think you're saying?"

Nora nodded, but she didn't speak. Literally she was frantic with the pain like a vise at her throat; but Jill must choose, too.

Mack's browned, shaggy face haunted her. Mack, who had rejected her as a child; so for years she had to prove herself stronger. She had seduced Pammy—she knew it now; Pammy had made the overt gesture, but Nora had invited it; unable to be a girl with Pammy, had played the part of a boy to her; a sort of play at being Mack. And when Mack had brought his wife to her, again there had been the compulsion to prove herself the better man.

Like a flash of lightning it hit her;

But Mack—Mack had not rejected her!

Mack had wanted her as a woman! For the first time in her life, she saw herself and Mack clearly. Why, Mack hadn't rejected her—ever! He had been protecting her— with all the strong and honorable manhood in him, he had fought to guard the little girl he had called his sister. He had even exiled himself from the home he loved; so that he would not be tempted, again, to hurt or disillusion the girl he loved as a sister, although she was not.

And how had she rewarded him? By seducing away his wife? Mack had reached an impasse with Jill; even his love could do no more.

The ache and panic were still with Nora. Could Jill take that one step to Mack, or would she drift around, rudderless, at the mercy of anyone who would seize her and pull her into a moment's safe harbor?

If I have broken up Mack and Jill, I'll have to take the responsibility for her. After that, I have no right to—to abandon her, too. If I leave her, what will happen? Will she let Mack go, and drift into the world of Flora's, with anyone who'll give her a little love and security? At least she would be safe with me. I've acted like a silly, frustrated adolescent; it's time I faced up to the mess I made.

She thrust her hands in her pockets to keep from stretching them to Jill, and touched something flat and hard; the bankbook. Again, in memory, she heard Mack's words; I've got a big brotherly shoulder, if you want to do some crying. She had been too proud to admit herself a woman, in need of comfort; and her pride had taken a worse fall when she flung herself into his arms.

She handed the bankbook quietly to Jill.

"I don't know when I'll see Mack again—"

"I don't either," said Jill. Nora's heart turned over, but she kept her voice level.

"But it's something you have to settle with him. If you don't want to marry him, that's up to you. But this much you owe him—you never needed it, but I kept it for you."

Jill opened it, slowly, while Nora sat tense and pale. What had Mack said? Jill thinks only one kind of woman will take money from a man. Would Jill explode into rage at Mack, for this blow to her pride? Had she finally weighted the scales, unfairly, against him—turning Jill against him forever at the last?

She wanted to say; I made a fool of myself with Mack. I don't want to knuckle under to Kit. Jill, my darling, my love, you were right all along. Come with me, now, tonight, and the hell with everyone else.

But Jill was turning it over slowly in her hands. She said, "I—don't understand, Nora. From Mack?"

Nora held herself from moving by the greatest effort of her life.

"He wouldn't offer it to your face. He was afraid you'd be angry. But he wanted to protect you, in case you had his baby and were afraid to tell him, or too proud. He knew you pretty well, Jill."

"Yes," Jill whispered, "He did."

And suddenly she clasped it to her heart, her gray eyes rainbowed with tears. "Oh, Nor, and I never knew! All the time, he was looking after me—after both of us. Mary was his baby, too. I never even thought of that, I never even realized that he'd—he'd lost his daughter too. Oh, Nor, I was so stubborn, and yet all the time he was taking care of me—" the wild joy in her voice brought them both up physically to their feet.

"Nora, Nora, what have I done to Mack? And yet he loves me, he wants me, he's waiting for me—oh, I won't make him wait, not another hour! I'll go to him, we can be married tonight—" she said, in a voice that trembled, "It isn't the money. I've got four times that much in a savings bank in Hartford. Money Daddy left me. I never even bothered to transfer it to a bank here. It's the—the fact that he wanted to take care of me.”

Nora ran her dry tongue over her lips. Unwittingly, she had weighted the scales indeed—but against herself. Jill could take that one step now; but she would take it to Mack.

“— oh how could I do that to Mack? When he loves me so much?"

When he loves me. Not, when I love him so much. Nora finally accepted; always, to Jill, who loved her would be more important than whom she loved. Those Jill had loved—her father, the detective her girlish fancy had loved, even Nora—had hurt and betrayed her. Jill would always feel happiest with those who were content to love her and demand little.

She loved Nora. Perhaps she would always love Nora. But even Nora would make demands on her. Mack would ask nothing but that she permit him to love her, keep her safe, make her happy. And she would be happy.

Jill flung herself on Nora, kissing her rapturously. Then she smiled through her tears. "I could almost hate you—letting me do this to Mack for so long!"

"Well," said Nora softly, "you know where he is.”

Jill clung to her. "Nora, Nora—if I go to Peru with Mack, I won't see you again for years and years—I hate to say goodbye—"

Nora made herself smile. She felt as if she had been through a major operation and was still mercifully in shock. "Don't be silly, sweetie, you're behaving like a schoolgirl with a crush. Give Mack my love."

So she was atoning to Mack for her weakness and folly. He would understand her emotional turmoil; he would understand, and forgive. Forgive Nora... and himself.

Jill let her go, but kept one of her hands. "Nora, wait, I want to say something. No—nothing you won't want to hear. Only that you're the finest woman I've ever known. I've been acting like a child, talking about independence and all that nonsense. I know now why Mack wanted me to know you." She raised Nora's hands to her lips and kissed them. "He knew I needed a—a big sister like you."

And suddenly Pammy's ghost was laid. Jill, appealing to Nora as a woman, put the last of her old doubts to flight. She knew and accepted what she was; as much of a woman as Pammy; as much of a woman as Jill. A woman to be desired, to yield; not to command, or seduce.

Guilt lay on her, and shame; but she could live with them, and transmute them into compassion for other women who had not yet learned to live with what they were.

She had set Jill free; and Jill had given her back the greatest gift of all; self-understanding, and self-acceptance.

She drew Jill to her for the last time, and kissed her on the wet eyes. "Goodbye, darling," she said gently, "be happy. Take good care of Mack for me."

She went to the door and down the stairs and as she stepped out into the gray street and the gray rain she saw a light go on in Jill's room upstairs, and a dark silhouette bend—over a suitcase? A telephone?

And Nora realized that for the first time in her adult life, she was crying. Not the strangled, shamed sobs of a man who is afraid of tears, but the flooding, relief-giving weeping of woman.

And for the first time since she had plunged out of her own apartment, she thought of Kit, and what he must be enduring, and how soon she could relieve his anxiety and his pain and his dread. Kit, who could comfort her for the child they were not to have. Still sobbing, still feeling the hot tears rolling unchecked down her face with the cold rain, Nora Ellersen thrust her hands sturdily into her empty pockets, turned her back on all the strange harbors, and set her steps toward home.

~ ~ ~

AFTERWORD

A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America—a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and how people would purchase and read them.

In 1939 a new publishing company—Pocket Books—stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. These books were cheaply produced and, with a price of twenty-five cents on their light cardboard covers, affordable for the average American.

Prior to the introduction of the mass-market paperback, as it would come to be known, the literary landscape in America was quite different than what it is today. Reading was primarily a leisure-time pursuit of the wealthy and educated. Hardcover books were expensive and hard to find, so purchasing books was a luxury only the rich living in major metropolitan areas could afford. There simply weren’t many bookstores across the country, and only gift shops and stationary stores carried a few popular novels at a time.

The Pocket Books were priced to sell, however, and sell is what they did… in numbers never before seen. Availability also had a great effect on sales, in large part due to a bold and innovative distribution model that made Pocket Books available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops. The American public could not get enough of them, and before long the publishing industry began to take notice of Pocket Book’s astonishing success.

Traditional publishers, salivating at the opportunity to cash in on the phenomenal success of the new paperback revolution, soon launched their own paperback ventures. Pocket Books was joined by Avon in 1941, Popular Library in 1942, and Dell in 1943. The popular genres reflected the tastes of Americans during World War II—mysteries, thrillers, and “hardboiled detective” stories were all the rage.

Like many of the early paperback publishers, Dell relied on previously published material for its early books, releasing “complete and unabridged” reprints under different titles by established authors. Within a couple of years it was focused exclusively on mysteries, identifiable by the Dell logo on the cover—a small keyhole with an eye looking through it. Many of the Dell mysteries also featured a colored map on the back cover representing the various locations pertaining to the story’s crime. These “mapback” editions became extremely popular and by 1945, Dell was publishing four new books a month.

The new paperback industry was faced with some difficult challenges during World War II. In particular, the War Board’s Paper Limitation order placed serious restrictions and rations on the use of paper. Publishers began to worry whether they would have enough paper to satisfy both the civilian and military appetite for paperbacks. Manpower shortages and transportation difficulties were also proving to be difficult challenges. In response, some publishers—Pocket Books, for instance—reduced their publication schedules and reset their books in smaller type thereby reducing the number of pages per book. Others simply rejected longer books in favor of shorter ones.

In the end, World War II proved to be a boon to the emerging paperback industry. During the war, a landmark agreement was reached with the government in which paperbound books would be produced at a very low price for distribution to service men and women overseas. These books—Armed Services Editions, as they were called—were often passed from one soldier or sailor to another, being read and re-read over and over again until they literally fell apart. Their stories of home helped ease the soldier’s loneliness and homesickness, and they could be easily carried in uniform pockets and read anywhere—in fox holes, barracks, transport planes, etc. Of course, once the war was over millions of veterans returned home with an insatiable appetite for reading. They were hooked, and their passion for reading these books helped launch a period of unprecedented growth in the paperback industry.

The reading tastes of these veterans were directly reflected in the popularity of certain genres at the turn of the decade. In the mid-to late 1940s, mysteries, romance, thrillers, and hardboiled detective stories seemed to sell better. In the early 1950s new genres—science fiction, westerns, gay and lesbian, juvenile delinquent and “sleaze”, for instance—gained in popularity as readers were presented with stories never before seen in print. Publishers also came to realize that sex would sell books… lots of books. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they ditched their conservative and straightforward cover images for alluring covers that frequently featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised stories of sex and violence within the covers. Before long, books with sensational covers had completely taken over the paperback racks and cash registers. To this day, the cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago.

Science fiction titles reflected the uncertain times during which they were written. The Cold War was just beginning, the threat of nuclear annihilation was on everyone’s mind, governments in Eastern Europe were falling to Communists, and Senator Joseph McCarthy was looking for “un-American activities” everywhere in the United States. Many science fiction stories in the early days of the paperback revolution were little more than soap operas or westerns set in space—good guys taking on bad guys while rescuing damsels in distress—that were short stories taken from the pulp magazines. In 1952, however, Ballantine Books changed all that by becoming the first paperback publisher to release novel-length science fiction stories that were sophisticated, intelligent and thematically serious. In 1953, Ballantine Book No. 41 was released—Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451—and the paperback’s science fiction genre launched like a rocket heading to Venus.

The popularity of this new genre wasn’t lost on new paperback publisher, Ace Books, which became known primarily for its publication of sci-fi titles. Not content with publishing one science fiction novel at a time, Ace came up with an interesting gimmick—the double novel. Priced at thirty-five cents, the “Ace Double” featured two paperback novels bound back-to-back with the back cover appearing upside-down in the racks. The stories contained within these “double” paperbacks were novellas or long short stories, rather than novels, but the reading public didn’t care—they loved getting two books for the price of one! The format also worked to the advantage of Ace Books, as they were able to combine the work of an unknown (and, therefore, less expensive) writer with that of a prominent and popular author. As a result, the careers of more than a few aspiring science fiction writers were launched via the innovative “Ace Double.”

Science fiction would not be the only genre with titles flying off the shelves in the early 1950s, however. And, it is unlikely that even Gold Medal Books knew, in 1950, just how successful its first lesbian-themed paperback original novel—Women’s Barracks—would be. Written by Tereska Torres, and based on her experiences in London with the French Resistance movement during World War II, the book was not intended to launch an entire lesbian genre—it was a story about women during wartime, some of whom happened to be romantically involved with other women. The story simply resonated with men and women alike—both straight and gay—and by the end of 1950 had sold more than a million copies for Gold Medal.

Women’s Barracks also caught the attention of the government, unfortunately, and was singled out by the Gathings Committee as an example of how the paperback industry was subverting the morals of America. The threat of fines and incarceration made the paperback industry skittish about publishing anything that could be considered “indecent” and before long, a sort of self-censorship was in full swing. Many stories featuring characters that lived their lives outside the rules of the prevailing morality of the times soon became dark and punishing, as there could be no happy endings for those who defied convention. Still, the lesbian titles were enormously popular and soon paperback publishers—beginning with Gold Medal—realized sales would skyrocket if they moved from reprints to “paperback originals.”

This move toward of the publication of original fiction by paperback companies created an immediate and strong demand for writers and provided unprecedented opportunities for women writers in particular. While it is true that some of the lesbian titles during the 1950s were written by men using female pseudonyms, a good number were written by women, many of whom were lesbians themselves. And although they were still required to write within the prescribed moral guidelines set by their editors, quite a few were able to portray the lesbian lives of their characters with a significant degree of honesty and compassion.

For lesbians across the country, especially those living isolated lives in small towns, these books provided a sense of community they never knew existed… a connection to women who experienced the same longings, feelings and fears as they did—the powerful knowledge that they were not alone. With the birth of the lesbian-themed pulp novel, women who loved women could finally see themselves—their experiences and their lives—represented within the pages of a book. They finally had a literature they could call their own.

We are excited to make these wonderful paperback stories… these pulp novels, as they have come to be known, available in ebook format to new generations of readers. We present them in their original form, with very little modification, so as to preserve the tone and atmosphere of the time period. In fact, much of the language—the slang, the colloquialisms, the lingo, even the spellings of some words—appear as they were written fifty or sixty years ago. We hope you will enjoy this nostalgic look back at a period in American history when dames were dangerous, tough-guys were deadly and dolls were downright delicious.

—Kathryn James, Editor

* * *

For more classic pulp ebooks, visit us online at www.vintage-pulp-ebooks.com!

Love the book cover? Get fabulous gift products featuring pulp cover art at our online store, Vintage Pulp Cover Art (http://www.cafepress.com/pulpcoverart) – mugs, refrigerator magnets, t-shirts, notecards and more!

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

AFTERWORD