He would, too, I thought. Get rich and pay back--Ricky. "Hundred bucks?" "That wasn't why I wanted to see you. But thanks." He fumbled in his mind for some sort of beginning. "Oh, hell," he finally said. "What I want to say can be put in two sentences. And they're the hardest two I ever had to speak. I haven't tried them on anybody yet. But I've got to--with someone. Meaning you. It goes like this." For a full minute he sat there saying nothing. Then he pushed back his rather long chestnut hair and looked at me squarely--with an expression in his eyes that I would remember for a long time, if I had a long time to remember in. "I'm in love. And the girl's a whore." He turned away from me, after that, and looked toward the window, toward afternoon blue sky into which the sun still pointed. His chin was shaking. I thought of several responses and picked one carefully. "All right. It's said--the whole thing. It leaves me fairly undisturbed, Paul." "I guess you don't understand--don't believe me. I mean it. The girl actually was--a professional tart. A call girl. What they hold to be a high-class one." "So I gathered. I've known several cases." "It--" He swallowed hard a time or two. "Mind if I have another Scotch?" I shook my head. He ordered and began once again. "I didn't know it--like a dope--for a long time. I can't even tell whether or not knowing it right off--would have made a difference. I suppose it would. I suppose I'd just have been bitter--because I couldn't afford her. The name's Marcia." "Nice name." "Yeah. Look, Phil. It was last winter--after I got back from Eniwetok. Some of the directors of a big corporation where I'd been called in for a conference asked me to a party. Marcia was there. I suppose that the other girls were the same." He looked at his knuckles. "Scratch that. I know they were--now. Nobody said anything about it. Just--big corporation hospitality for people like me, whose advice might make them a few more millions. I sat around drinking cocktails and having a swell time and thinking that the girls had got prettier while I was in the Pacific, working. I didn't know they were to take home--like candy--compliments of the management. And Marcia didn't mention the fact when I asked her if she'd care to ditch the binge and have supper just with me." "No." "She merely went. She went--and was charming. You see--she caught onto my naïve assumptions, and she was being paid, and it amused her to be thought of as just an ordinary girl--a debutante, or the like--for whom a smart young physicist was falling like a ton of bricks." He looked at me again. His explanation was coming more easily. "Do you get the picture?" "She must be bright. As well as attractive."