"Then for God's sake be more attentive to what you think!" "Jesuit!" "I'm the nemesis of that whole philosophy." "At least--you're sincere. I didn't believe so, when I read your books. I thought you were just fond of shocking people." "I could never shock them a millionth part of the amount they've shocked me." "But you did your best?" I laughed at that. "Sometimes." A sad confession. "Don't you love burning brandy?" We watched the peaches flame. 2 I took her over to the Amigo. They had a rumba band there that would give sloe-eyed fantasies to a Norseman. And it wasn't crowded. I haven't said--was it necessary?--that I intended to make Mrs. Prentiss eat one or two of those gardenias. That is, I proposed in my mind to bring her to the point of withdrawing the order that I was to behave toward her in all chaste chivalry. As to what I would do beyond that, I had no idea. It could not possibly be important if I followed up a moral (or immoral) victory with what would then be an ethical (or unethical) act. Mrs. Prentiss was a remarkably handsome young woman. She was somewhat educated and she had a fair degree of intellectual sensitivity. In telling me she had not understood what I was saying she had implied a considerable degree of comprehension and a reluctance to deal with whatever it was that she had gathered from my words. She was "mostly" frigid (an intriguing expression) in many different ways. In any sexual encounter she would undoubtedly barricade herself from biological design with common artifact--and half the Pharmacopoeia, besides. She was avid and did not know it. I could see--as the reader has seen with me, no doubt--that her domestic debacle was the result of a projection of her own guilt-sense. She was a nubile dancer. But she used her dancing rather meanly--as a sly and enjoyable confession to herself which, she thought, was the most that society would permit of dancing. She was somewhat spoiled and very selfish--extremely prissy in the real, felt sense of the word: a bitch. Nobody, that is to say, existed for her excepting in that they existed for her desires. She had moved to a room beside me. She had tried to lead me--at first--on the dance floor. She had thrust the eyes and lips of her psyche into the brunette cashier's hair without caring in the least for the brunette or for any woman or for what happened to others. She had attributed the libidinous gesture to my imagination, when I had brought it to light. She had failed to add anything but frustration to the life of a man about whom I had heard, so far, what I regarded as almost nothing but good. She had bought her world and was willing to pay in cash to keep it the way she wanted it--but not willing to pay in a dime's worth of herself. She needed a lesson. For there were nice things about her.