unison and imposing penalties so severe that no one will dare to do what you have done here today. No one not sex-privileged; and even the sex-privileged have become too numerous. Do you hear? Even they have become too numerous and just thinking about it—the bridal bed, everything that takes place in the mating centers night and day—has become hateful to me."

"That does not surprise me!" Alicia cried. "Envy can become a corrosive blight."

"It is not envy!"

"Listen to me, old woman, I will tell you what takes place in the mating centers. A young man, strong-limbed and comely, removes all of his garments and walks with proud and eager steps into the chamber of his beloved. She too has removed—"

"No, be quiet. I will not listen. Are you lost to all shame?"

"Not as lost to shame as you are, old woman. Listen well. You may never hear it again, at least, not from lips as eloquent as mine. It is all a great glory new to me—a glory just discovered, just revealed. So I can speak of it without restraint and without false modesty. It does not bring a blush to my cheeks. Why should it to yours?"

"You are a lewd wanton."

"No, I am a proud and honest woman who knows what it means now to love and be loved in return. Listen well. She is reclining on a couch, and the moonlight shines on her young breasts. He is approaching, you see, quietly so as not to startle her, and for a moment as long as forever his eyes linger on that which only a true lover is privileged to see. Then very gently and tenderly—"

"Stop! I will not listen. If you are not silent I will shout now, so loudly that you and your lover will never reach the edge of the strip. You will be caught and brought back before you have gone a hundred feet into the countryside."

"I told you what I would do if you shouted," Teleman said warningly.

"Her words are more hateful than anything you could do! Keep her quiet or I will take her by the throat and cut off her breath with my bare hands."

"Scarecrow hands, old woman. The bony hands of a witch. Listen well to the delights of young love in the dark. Oh, I'm forgetting. It isn't quite dark. The moonlight is slanting down and—"

The gaunt woman clapped her hands to her ears and shut her eyes, swaying 

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