She wanted to show Leland a snapshot of Dr. Roberts that she had taken at a barbecue in her back yard at the beginning of the summer. It had not been posed, she said as she passed it over the table. It had caught Roberts in the middle of a leap high into the air for the shuttlecock in a badminton game. He was wearing a sweatshirt and a pair of chinos of the sort that MacIver had been wearing in the picture she had given Leland back at the office. Roberts looked tall and thin, almost spidery, and in excellent condition for his age, around fifty. He had an even tan, which meant a sunlamp at that time of year—and he worked out to keep in shape. He had not seen the camera, his eyes squinted up into the sun. His hair was white, the little there was, and it looked as if he had the barber trim it with the machine. The fringe above his ear was no longer than a two-day growth of beard. He looked like a man who would adjust to being innocent about some things. Apparently he knew how to play and enjoy himself, but he made such good use of his time teaching, maintaining a private practice, and putting in hours at a clinic, that Leland wanted to see him as a man who did not forget himself at the wrong times. As an analyst Roberts himself had been through psychoanalysis—Leland knew that much. Leland had heard of analysts on whom the process had not taken, but this man did not seem to be one of them. He could be innocent, but he was not easily fooled. Leland returned the photograph.

“Has he seen this?”

“Oh, yes. I had an eight-by-ten print made and framed. He has it on his desk at home.”

“He must be quite a character,” Leland said.

“He is. You’ll like him, I know you will.”

After a year in therapy, she wanted to accept the offer of another student to live with him. Now Roberts did not like it. He did not say no, but he insisted that she go home and think it through a second time. When she came in the next week she told him that she had gone out and picked up a sailor to test her feelings for the fellow who wanted her to live with him.

“The next morning, I was in love with the Navy. I like them both, I really do, but I couldn’t possibly love either of them. How could I? They’re both attractive enough for me to sleep with, but I don’t have to live with anybody for sex. I can get all the sex I want. In a way, I want all the sex I can get, too. That’s normal, isn’t it? I mean, it is for me. I don’t have to wreck my life for it.”