Suddenly Loring saw that the fly had no head. Its head was in a fold of the garment, an enshrouded and bulging horror, still squirming, the huge compound eyes visible through the almost transparent cloth. The completely decapitated body was sinking jerkily to the floor. He was still gripping the end of the garment, but he flung it from him suddenly with a shudder of revulsion, and turned. Janice had slumped to the floor in a dead faint. * * * * * "Wake up," a cold voice said. "It is over now. You have won your struggle and are in a garden of delight." There was a drowsy hum in Loring's ears, as of bees in a woodland glade. Not the hum of long-bodied hornets, cruel and rapacious, but the gentler hum of golden, honey-seeking bumblebees. And bumblebees did not sting if you did not anger them. They did not paralyze their victims to provide food for their grubs. He awoke to an awareness of sunlight and shadow, garlanded bowers, grassy slopes and the gleaming bright waters of a stream. He blinked sleep from his eyes and rose to a sitting position. He saw the women by the stream first, bare to the waist, their ivory breasts dew-bright in the dawn glow, their hips voluptuously curved. Some of the women were bending above the stream, filling long-necked, delicately-fashioned urns with water. Others were bathing in the stream and had removed their garments completely. Then, quite suddenly, Loring realized that there was no need for him to watch the women bathing. Or even the women who were bending with such tantalizingly sensual grace on the banks of the stream. There were women much closer to him, attired in the same way or wearing no clothes at all. One of them was embracing him now, her arms creeping up under his.... He remembered the strange garment that had been placed upon him before an earlier awakening and how he had flung it from him. And he realized now that he was not encumbered by a garment of any sort. He had felt a little embarrassed before, to be even lightly clad in Janice's presence. But he experienced no such embarrassment now. The woman closest to him was whispering soft words in his ear. "You were very brave. You did not flinch or draw back when the hornet attacked. I adore men who are very strong, as you are, and completely sure of themselves. What a lover you will make! I have claimed you first and the others can wait. There is no need for them to grow impatient. No one woman could hope to exhaust the capacity for love of a man like you. There will be enough love for all. But I have claimed you first and you I shall have. Now. Kiss me, lover! Hold me close!" She moved in his arms, and it seemed to him that he was clasping not one woman, but a hundred, each different in her knowledge of the dedicatory arts that can be learned only at Eros' shrine, but each a woman passionate and responsive and by the same token eternally the same.