“Like what I did. Like asking what you did. I don’t know why. I want to know if I killed everything between us.”

“You’d have to kill Steffie. Are you willing to do that?”

“Of course not.” She glanced at him. “I don’t believe I’m insane. Why haven’t you divorced me?”

He took a breath. “I’m not sure myself.”

“Do you know what you’re married to?”

He wasn’t going to answer that.

“That’s exactly what I am, you know.” She turned, slowly. She looked so pale and sickly in the fluorescent light that it frightened him. “Once I started with Jerry I decided to do things that would make him fall in love with me. You have to do that. I consciously tried. I pretended and acted and planned things. There was a part of me always thinking of a new way to go further. I couldn’t really forget myself, so that was the way I got around it. I mean this, Joe. It was the same with the others. All of them wanted to see me again.”

“A job well done? Any woman could do it.”

“I know that. Don’t you think I know it? That’s what it’s all about. I knew these things in advance and I went ahead and courted them anyway.

“On second thought, you’re wrong. Any woman couldn’t have done it. The night I went back to Palmer I was so frightened I could feel my legs buckling under me. It was the same with the other men those afternoons in the hotels. Most women couldn’t have gone against themselves that way. All the selecting I did was in picking men who were physically attractive. That’s all. One time I didn’t want to do it at all and I didn’t let that stop me. It was a question of getting it out of my system.”

“Why didn’t you go to a hospital? Why didn’t you call me? You could have gone to a psychiatrist.”

“I didn’t want to admit that I’d failed—in spite of all the evidence. It’s really comic. That was important to me. Do you remember? I was going to have success. There were always men around. You saw that the night you met me. I was a flirt—I didn’t even realize it until you were in the service. Jerry Palmer couldn’t keep away from me and I tormented him. I would let him kiss me but when he put his hand on me I would push it away—but very slowly. I never did it with you or any of the others when I was further along. He begged for that kind of treatment and I was the person to give it to him. Just the person. He thought that that was what love was all about.”

“Are you excusing yourself?”