He reached out and put his hand on her bare shoulder. Her skin was warm, almost hot to his touch. She stirred slightly and a questioning look came into her eyes. Shaken as he was, that almost imperceptible moving of her body in response to his touch made him feel almost as he would have felt if he had deliberately caressed her and she had shivered with pleasure and shown him unmistakably that she was not displeased. Nothing had been further from his mind, but now he found himself wondering what would happen if he touched her again, and this time more boldly. He reached down and gently cupped one of her breasts, taking care to let his fingers encircle its smooth roundness without suggesting that he was engaged in anything more than a medical examination. He told himself that he felt that way about it--a purely clinical test. Something terrible had happened to her. He had to find out just how terrible as quickly as possible. Any kind of response would tell him whether her reason had been shattered completely and could not be restored, or whether she was merely in a state of shock and could be aroused by guiding her firmly along pathways of passion, taking care to think of himself only as a concerned and solicitous physician. That and nothing more. But he was not prepared for the violence of her response and the sudden, almost convulsive tightening of her arms about him. He had not expected her to come so instantly alive again, with lips so demanding that he found himself struggling to breathe, smothered by the insatiable frenzy of her kisses. Her mouth melted into his, her tongue became a darting shape of fire, fluttering, pulsating within the cavern of his mouth. She was a moth with fiery wings fluttering, a wild temptress. Her hands moved up and down and across his back, and her mouth unlocked itself and fastened on his ear, nibbling first at the lobe and then whispering softly into the chambered recess words of love sweet beyond endurance, dripping with the honey of forbidden ecstasies, unimagined delights. "No," he whispered, but found himself surrendering to her guidance and then, suddenly, he was guiding her, anticipating her every desire, responding to every writhing of her body, every straining of her lips with a passion now as great as her own and now surpassing it, for he was not a man who needed to be instructed in the refinements and subtleties of love. What sobered him he never knew. But something did. One moment he was in a golden paradise with no memory of how he had come to be there and no desire to depart and the next he saw a woman with glazed eyes arising from his side, and movements so blind and purposeless that they chilled him and made his blood run cold. He saw her arise from the bed and step swayingly to the floor and move away from him across the room, her shoulders held rigid, her arms pressed stiffly to her side.