"Did you see My Fair LadyT "Three times. It wasn't on the forbidden list."

"An older man can find himself under a terrible compulsion to teach a young girl important things. It is a kind of arrogance masking itself as generosity and kindliness. I happen to think that kind of physical pleasure is the closest thing to heaven we ever find on earth. And so I fought the terrible temptation to see if I could help her find that kind of pleasure. I fought it and I lost."

"You're rotten! You're really a rotten person."

"Guilty. Rotten, licentious, wicked. A libertine, seducer of ignorant young girls. Bound for hell in a basket. Anything you want to call me, I'm guilty."

"But don't you even ' "Now let's look at the other side of this crazy coin, Annalee.

It is a custom these days to talk of scenarios. What would the scenario have been had Patsy Knox never sent you that note?

Doreen and I would have continued our relationship for a time. We would have continued to be very discreet. And then, little by little, I would have loosened any hold I might have over her. Right now she thinks she loves me more than life itself. But it isn't love, of course. It's a physical infatuation, the by-product of a healthy young body and a lot of care and gentleness and patience and understanding. She feels great guilt, because she has found her way back to the Eternal Church and she knows we are sinning. However, she knows she found forgiveness for the sins in her past, and I am certain she will find forgiveness for what is happening now. She is healthy and alive and her eyes sparkle. She has learned to enjoy physical love, and that will help her in the marriage she will make one day. I love to hear her laugh. I love the funny little jokes she makes up. She believes that we are both deep in a sin we cannot help and cannot stop committing, and that we will go on like this forever. Not so. On many bases we have far too little in common. In my own time, with utmost kindness, I am going to push her away. I will do it, I swear, in such a way it will become her idea. I cannot really believe I have harmed her in any way. Can you understand that?"

"I'm trying to."

"Does she know you're here?"

"Oh no! I didn't want to see her until after I found out for sure what's been going on."

"So the ball is in your court, as they say. You can destroy a lot of people, and probably lose your daughter and your husband, or you can have a nice visit with Doreen, and say nothing about our talk, and tell her you came up to see how she's getting along. Then you can go back home and pick up your life and you have my word this will end."

"When? How soon?"

"That will depend on how much she resists breaking off our friendship. Anyway, it shouldn't last past Christmas."

"Christmas!" she said, in agitation.

"But it's only four months off," he said.

"All right then, but there's something I have to know."

"I don't know what you mean. What sort of thing?"

"I was going to ask you if you have other women too. But I guess I don't want to know that."

"While the affair continues, Annalee, I am faithful to Doreen. I could profess my great and undying love, but that would be another lie. I have a lot of affection for her. She is a pleasant person and she is not intellectually demanding. After a full day of the kind of work I do, I find her sweet and restful."

"But if... if I just let it keep going on... then I am committing a sin too. Like being in a conspiracy. Like sitting out in the car when somebody is robbing a bank. Oh God. I don't know. I don't know what to do."

She put her hands to her face and began rocking from side to side, sobbing aloud.

He went quickly to the bed and sat beside her and took hold of her wrists, pulled her hands down from her face. She fought him for a few moments and then went slack, her face turned away, while she made snuffling, choking sounds.

"Annalee, please. I want to recite something to you, something I memorized when I was young and I've never forgotten it. It was written a very long time ago. This is it. Such, he said, O King, seems to me the present life of man on earth in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, as when you are sitting at supper with your warriors and counselors in the season of winter, the hall being warmed by a fire blazing on the hearth in the center, the storms of the wintry rains or snows raging without; and then a sparrow entering the house should swiftly flit across the hall, entering at one door and quickly disappearing at the other. The time that it is within, it is safe from the wintry blast, but the narrow bounds of warmth and shelter are passed in a little moment and then the bird vanishes out of sight, returning again into the winter's night from which it has just emerged. So this life of man appears for a short interval; but of what went before or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant."

She had controlled her sobs in order to listen, and before he had finished it she had turned to him, frowning, her face blotched, eyes still streaming her tears.

"B-but," she said, 'that is all so... cold and empty. You think life is nothing more than that? It's so scary. How can you stand going on if you think that's what we are? Just kind of... nothing."

She had ceased any resistance. The back of her right hand rested in the palm of his left hand and, by accident, his thumb pressed against the pulse in her wrist. He felt the soft steady pump of her heart against the ball of his thumb.

From its hiding place in the thicket, the ancient one-eyed beast awakened and lifted its head slightly, testing the forest breeze for the familiar scents, listening for the crackle of a twig as the prey approached.

Oh no, he thought. You talk about wickedness and contemplate this act. And even as you contemplate it, you are telling yourself, in a kindly tone, like an uncle, that this would be an absolutely certain way of sealing her lips. She's been readied by all the talk, by all the churn of emotions, by her own fears and uncertainties. In a matter of minutes it could begin, and all her protestations would be listless, her voice small, her body slack with only token resistance.

He remembered when he was little his uncle had a brown Studebaker, and on the dashboard was affixed, by a suction cup, a red rubber head of the devil, bounding about on a spring. It was always facing forward, through the windshield, but it turned around easily and whenever he rode with his uncle at some point in the trip he would turn the devil head around. It bobbed on the spring, grinning its devil grin, jaws agape, revealing the red rubber tongue. The eyes were tiny glass marbles, milky white, with black spots for pupils. He remembered his uncle saying one day, "If you play with your dink, Joey, that there is the fellow who's going to come get you and take you away."

He felt new tension in her hands and wrists and he saw from her widened eyes and suddenly compressed lips that she had sensed what he was thinking about. Looking into her eyes, he knew that she knew that it could probably happen, right here, right now, on this narrow motel bed in the sacred ambience of the Meadows Center, close enough to the Tabernacle to hear the electronic chimes on the hour and half hour.

Her mouth made the shape of a soundless 'no'.

He released her and stood up and went to the window and looked out.

"The point is our utter ignorance," he said.

"What?"

"The point of the quotation. We have no certain way of knowing."

"Faith makes you certain. Really certain.

"Never yield to evil, practice good and you will have an everlasting home, for Jehovah loves what is right and never deserts the devout." ' He turned and smiled at her.

"Nothing is easy, except to people who are too dumb to care. You and I care about many, many of the same things and have many values in common."

"And there's a lot we don't have in common."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know yet. I'm going to think about everything you said. I am going to pray for guidance. And then I'll decide.".

"I hope you'll be merciful, Annalee."

"I hope so too, Joe Deets. But in the end I'll do what I have to do. I'll do what Jesus Christ tells me to do."

He had the bleak feeling that he had lost this game. He had been close to winning it, but there was a signal in the righteous little lift of her chin.

"Maybe you could pray with me?" he said gently, remembering the movie about the godfather and the offer that couldn't be refused.

"You're not fit to pray words over me," she said.

"But if you want to kneel down, you can stay here while I pray."

She got down and knelt and turned so that her folded hands rested, childlike, on the side of the single bed. He knelt by the chair.

"Dear Lord, I have been a faithful member of Your flock for a long time, ever since I was forgiven and I was healed a long time ago. I have been leading a decent Christian life and following all Your laws all the time, in my home and my marriage. I prayed to You to save my daughter Doreen when she was wicked and had lost sight of You. I prayed to You to give her back to the Church and her loving family. Now I don't know what to do or which way to turn. The man kneeling here with me pretends to be a minister of Your Church, but he is not."

Her voice was small, frail, young, and somehow confident that it was being heard. The silence lasted so long he wondered if she was through. And then she began again.