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She had a feeling of violation, of penetration to the uttermost soul of her being, of having been raped in a way that was worse and more devastating than any physical rape. She had been a liberal all her life; for almost half a century, there had been no good cause in San Francisco that Barbara Lavette had not been a part of—frequently as the leader. It began with the great waterfront strike of the thirties, and it went on from there, one thing after another until it became a commonplace to turn to Barbara Lavette— So why the guilt? she asked herself. It was not the jewels; she had been entirely truthful with herself and with the thief when she said she did not give a damn for the jewels. It was what he said and how he said it; and his leaving the ring. She recalled his gesture of contempt as he tossed the ring on the comforter. Any hockshop would have gladly paid a hundred dollars for the ring. What was gold selling for now—four hundred, five hundred dollars an ounce? She tried to recall the sum; she didn’t read the financial pages, but the enormous rise in the price of gold was talked about all over the City.
    On the other hand, her father’s name, Dan Lavette, was inscribed on the inside of the ring, and when she recalled that and realized that it would be worthless to the thief unless melted down, and a conclusive piece of evidence if he were to be caught with the ring in his possession, she was at last able to relax. “Let virtue be what it is,” she said to herself, smiling forlornly for the first time since the night began.
    She must have dozed after that, and she awakened to the vague morning light. She left the bed and looked out of the window. Green Street tilted down Russian Hill to the Embarcadero, and from her window Barbara could see the last wisps of fog curling before the wind and drifting across the Bay. It was a beautiful sunny day, and for all that she had had so little sleep, she felt renewed and refreshed.
    She showered, pulled on a pair of gray slacks and a cashmere sweater, and went downstairs. Nothing appeared to be disturbed, except that the drawers in her desk were partially drawn and the clay jars in which she kept sugar and flour were upended and dumped on the kitchen table. He must have been careful, since she had heard no sound until his footsteps on the creaking stairs awakened her. The phone plugs had been pulled out of the wall and broken, so she was still without a telephone. Somewhere she had an extra phone wire, but that could wait until she had cleaned up the kitchen table and had breakfast.
    She had regained her composure, and that pleased her, but the cleaning of the kitchen table and the precise, orderly way she went about boiling two eggs and preparing a bowl of dry cereal made her acknowledge to herself that she was putting off the telephone call. In many ways Barbara was a precise and orderly person, but this time she was purposely slow and deliberate, giving her additional time to consider the question. She had heard that little that was stolen was recovered, and she had also heard that many people preferred to simply let it go and claim the insurance; but to claim the insurance, the theft must be reported to the police, and there was the rub. Do I or do I not want to report this to the police? She had told the thief and she had told herself that she didn’t give a damn about the jewelry, but the diamond and ruby brooch had been a gift from Carson. Was it callous—or could a lifeless thing have meaning? Why did she plead with the thief to let her keep her father’s ring? Why was she so hungry, buttering a third slice of toast and chewing it slowly and savoring each bite of it? Was this indifference? Carson had been her husband, and after she had divorced him, he had been her lover and protector, and this very morning, providing she could get her head together, she would begin to work on the final chapter of her new book, the story of her