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were serious, even calculating.
    “Our relationship isn’t that kind.” She still seemed unperturbed. “I don’t have any objections if Raphael has other diversions—any more than he’s upset by my little flings.”
    Raphael looked at her quickly, startled and with a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
    “Oh, my poor Angel,” she said, catching the look and laughing, “did you honestly think I was ‘saving myself for you? I have other friends, too, you know.”
    Raphael was sick, and at the same time ashamed to realize that he was actually jealous.
    In bed that night she brought it up again. She raised up on one elbow, her heavy breast touching his arm. “How is she?” she asked, “The other girl, I mean?”
    “It’s not that kind of thing,” he answered sulkily. “We just
    talk—have coffee together once in a while, that’s all.”
    “Don’t be coy,” she said with a wicked little laugh, deliberately rubbing her still-erect nipple on his shoulder. “A young man who looks like you do could have the panties off half the girls in Portland inside a week.”
    “I don’t go around taking people’s panties off.”
    “You take mine off,” she disagreed archly.
    “That’s different.” He moved his shoulder away.
    “Why is it different?”
    “She’s not that kind of a girl.”
    “Every girl is that kind of a girl.” She laughed, leaning forward so that the ripe breast touched him again. “We’re all alike. Is she as good as I am?”
    “Oh, for God’s sake, ‘Bel. Why don’t we just skip all this? Nothing’s going on. Flood’s got a dirty mind, that’s all.”
    “Of course he has. Am I embarrassing you, sweet? We shouldn’t be embarrassed by anything—not here.”
    “What about those other men?” he accused, trying to force her away from the subject.
    “What about them?”
    “I thought—well—” He broke off helplessly, not knowing how to pursue the subject.
    “Are you really upset because I sleep with other men once in a while? Are you really jealous, Angel?”
    “Well—no,” he lied, “not really.”
    “We never made any promises, did we? Did you think we were ‘going steady’ or something?” The persistent nipple continued its stroking of his shoulder.
    “I just didn’t think you were—well—promiscuous is all.”
    “Of course I’m promiscuous.” She laughed, kissing him. “I had you in bed within twelve hours of the moment I met you. Is that the sort of thing you’d expect from a nice girl? I’m not exactly a bitch in heat, but a little variety never hurt anyone, did it?”
    He couldn’t think of anything to say.
    “Don’t sulk, Angel,” she said almost maternally as she pulled
    him to her again. “You’ve got my full attention at the moment. That’s about the best I can promise you.”
    His flesh responded to her almost against his will. He’d have liked to have been stubborn, but she was too skilled, too expert.
    “You should try her, Raphael,” Isabel said almost conversationally a couple of minutes later. “A little variety might be good for you, too. And who knows? Maybe she’s better at it than I am.” She laughed, and then the laugh traded off into a series of little gasps and moans as she began to move feverishly under him.
    vi
    The idea had not been there before. In Raphael’s rather unsophisticated views on such matters, girls were divided into two distinct categories—those you took to bed and those you took to school dances. It was not that he was actually naive, it was just that such classification made his relations with girls simpler, and Raphael’s views on such things were simplistic. He had been raised in a small, remote city that had a strongly puritanical outlook; his Canadian mother had been quite firm about being “nice,” a firmness in part deriving from her lurking fear that some brainless sixteen-year-old tramp might unexpectedly present her with a squalling grandchild. Raphael’s football coach at