"Well, I don't have one. So I suppose I had better go."

"Of all the cheap tricks," the girl said. "I think I'll go too. Wait for me."

I waited for her while she went to get dressed. I put on my trousers over my swimming trunks, put on my shirt and shoes and sat on a bench and waited. When she came out we started for the exit. Ken came hurrying toward us.

"I thought I was taking you home," he said, his face red with anger.

She didn't bother to reply and he put his hand on her arm. I told him to let go and he let go. Then he swung around and hit me on the jaw with all his might. I grabbed his arm with one hand and his throat with the other and threw him into the middle of the pool.

Things were going better than I expected. As we walked along, she seemed quite interested in me. I told her my name and she told me that she was Beth Copperd, the daughter of a professor at the university. I pretended that I had not known those things.

When we got to her home, which was on a tree lined street, we paused for a moment. Across the street there was a car with a man sitting in it, pretending to read a newspaper.

I knew all about that man. I knew there was another man who was watching the back of the house. If not for that I would not have had to go through this lengthy affair with Beth Copperd.

"I regret very much this trouble with your friend," I said.

"You needn't. He's had it coming for a long time." She stared at me thoughtfully. "You know, Marko, I'm a little afraid of you."

"Of me? But why?"

"Well," she hesitated, "it's hard to say. But when a man jumps into a pool and swims so much faster than one of our country's best swimmers, and then picks up that swimmer and throws him fifty feet without the slightest effort ... well, that man is slightly unusual, to say the least."

"Oh, the swimming...."

I hadn't thought that what was quite ordinary for me might seem exactly the opposite to these people. I had blundered. So I tried to shrug it off, as though such things were common among my people. Which they were. But that line only dragged me deeper. This girl was no fool.

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