It was a couple of years since Paul had watched a woman undress. He had been living on a diet of pinups, and they always wore elaborate confections of silk and lace, corsets and garter belts and transparent negligees. Flick was wearing a loose cotton chemise, not a brassiere, and he guessed that the small, neat breasts he could see tantalizingly outlined beneath it did not need support. She dropped her skirt. Her panties were plain white cotton with frills around the legs. Her body was tiny but muscular. She looked like a schoolgirl getting changed for hockey practice, but he found that more exciting than a pinup.

She lay down again. "Is that better?" she said.

He stroked her hip, feeling the warm skin, then the soft cotton, then skin again. She was not yet ready, he could tell. He forced himself to be patient and let her set the pace. "You haven't told me about your first time," he said.

To his surprise, she blushed. "It wasn't as nice as yours."

"In what way?"

"It was a horrible place, a dusty storeroom."

He felt indignant. What kind of idiot could take a girl as special as Flick and submit her to a furtive quickie in a cupboard? "How old were you?"

"Twenty-two."

He had expected her to say seventeen. "Jeepers. At that age you deserve a comfortable bed."

"That wasn't it, though."

She was relaxing again, Paul could tell. He encouraged her to talk some more. "So what was wrong?"

"Probably that I didn't really want to do it. I was talked into it."

"Didn't you love the guy?"

"Yes, I did. But I wasn't ready."

"What was his name?"

"I don't want to tell you."

Paul guessed it was her husband, Michel, and decided not to question her any more. He kissed her and said, "May I touch your breasts?"

"You can touch anything you like."

No one had ever said that to him. He found her openness startling and exciting. He began to explore her body. In his experience, most women closed their eyes at this point, but she kept hers open, studying his face with a mixture of desire and curiosity that inflamed him more. It was as if by watching him she was exploring him, instead of the other way around. His hands discovered the pert shape of her breasts, and his fingertips got to know her shy nipples, learning what they liked. He took off her panties. She had curly hair the color of honey, lots of it, and under the hair, on the left side, a birthmark like a splash of tea. He bent his head and kissed her there, his lips feeling the crisp brush of her hair, his tongue tasting her moisture.

He sensed her yielding to pleasure. Her nervousness vanished. Her arms and legs spread out in a star shape, slack, abandoned, but her hips strained toward him eagerly. He explored the folds of her sex with slow delight. Her movements became more urgent.

She pushed his head away. Her face was flushed and she was breathing hard. She reached across to the bedside table, opened his billfold, and found the rubbers, three of them in a small paper packet. She ripped the pack with fumbling fingers, took one out, and put it on him. Then she straddled him as he lay on his back. She bent to kiss him, and said into his ear, "Oh, boy, you feel so good inside me." Then she sat upright and began to move.

"Take off your chemise," he said.

She pulled it over her head.

He watched her above him, her lovely face drawn into an expression of fierce concentration, her pretty breasts moving delightfully. He felt like the luckiest man in the world. He wanted this to go on forever: no dawn, no tomorrow, no plane, no parachute, no war.

In all of life, he thought, there was nothing better than love.

W H E N I T WA S over, Flick's first thought was: What will I say to Michel?

She did not feel unhappy. She was full of love and desire for Paul. In a short time she had come to feel more intimate with him than she ever had with Michel. She wanted to make love to him every day for the rest of her life. That was the trouble. Her marriage was over. And she would have to tell Michel as soon as she saw him. She could not pretend, even for a few minutes, to feel the same about him.

Michel was the only man she had been intimate with before Paul. She would have told Paul that, but she felt disloyal talking about Michel. It seemed more of a betrayal than simple adultery. One day she would tell Paul he was only her second lover, and she might say he was her best, but she would never talk to him about how sex was with Michel.

However, it was not just sex that was different with Paul, it was herself. She had never asked Michel, the way she had questioned Paul, about his early sexual experiences. She had never said to him You can touch anything you like. She had never put a rubber on him, or climbed on top of him to make love, or told him he felt good inside her.

When she had lain down on the bed beside Paul, another personality had seemed to come out of her, just as a transformation had come over Mark when he walked into the Criss-Cross Club. She suddenly felt she could say anything she liked, do anything that took her fancy, be herself without worrying what would be thought of her.

It had never been like that with Michel. Beginning as his student, wanting to impress him, she had never really got on an even footing with him. She had continued to seek his approval, something he had never done with her. In bed, she tried to please him, not herself

After a while, Paul said, "What are you thinking?"

"About my marriage," she said.

"What about it?"

She wondered how much to confess. He had said, earlier in the evening, that he wanted to marry her, but that was before she came to his bedroom. Men never married girls who slept with them first, according to female folklore. It was not always true, Flick knew from her own experience with Michel. But all the same she decided to tell Paul half the truth. "That it's over."

"A drastic decision."

She raised herself on her elbow and looked at him. "Does that bother you?"

"On the contrary. I hope it means we might see each other again."

"Do you mean that?"

He put his arms around her. "I'm scared to tell you how much I mean it."

"Scared?"

"Of frightening you off I said a foolish thing earlier."

"About marrying me and having children?"

"I meant it, but I said it in an arrogant way."

"That's okay," she said. "When people are perfectly polite, it usually means they don't really care. A little awkwardness is more sincere."

"I guess you're right. I never thought of that."

She stroked his face. She could see the bristles of his beard, and she realized the dawn light was strengthening. She forced herself not to look at her watch: she did not want to keep checking how much time they had left.

She ran her hand over his face, mapping his features with her fingertips: the bushy eyebrows, the deep eye sockets, the big nose, the shot-off ear, the sensual lips, the lantern jaw. "Do you have hot water?" she said suddenly.

"Yes, it's a swanky room. There's a basin in the corner."

She got up.