cruelly distorted and blind. You call the refusal to deny all men and women the right to love a madness and a folly. But it is you, it is all of us, who are mad! We have cut ourselves off from joy, from beauty, from everything that is truly creative and life-transforming. And I, for one, will not submit. I will no longer endure such a tyranny."

The words followed closely upon the scream, and there could be no doubt that the voice was that of a woman. She had risen in her seat on the elevated, next-to-last tier, and she was trembling violently, her face drained of all color.

There was a shocked silence for an instant and then one of the male Monitors cried out: "This is a shame and a scandal. She is herself a Monitor! That she should dare—"

"Yes, I will dare!" the woman proclaimed defiantly. She was standing very straight now, and her voice was no longer hysterical, but firm and unyielding. She was a woman of striking beauty, with lustrous dark hair and flashing dark eyes, and her pale brow was encircled by a tiara which glittered in the light from the screen and gave her an almost regal aspect.

"I am in love with love and I am not ashamed. I am proud."

As she spoke the woman unfastened her outer garment and quickly removed it, tossing it from her with a gesture of prideful disdain.

"You who appear merely as an image on a screen, but can see and hear me clearly enough through the audio-visual recorders which protect you so well from anger and rebellion, and a violence which you fear! And you who are seated here in the security of your high office, pretending to be all-powerful and untroubled, but knowing full well that whirlwinds of rebellion are undermining your power, day by day, hour by hour. All of you! Monitors, Guiding Specialist, cravens to the bone, look upon me as I am.

"I am not ashamed of my body. Look well upon my beauty, which was given to me for a purpose which you are too tragically crippled in body and mind to understand. Look well—and for the first time—on a beauty which was made for light and love and laughter. For grief, too, and a mutual sharing in a fulfillment which was once the heritage of every man and woman on Earth. To love and be loved is also a right, and if it is grasped firmly and with courage no power on Earth can destroy the glory of it."

The woman continued to remove her garments, tossing them aside one by one until she stood naked and unadorned in the downstreaming light. Her full 

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