"A good point. I agree with you."

"Have you ever been in love?"

"No."

"Do you know anything about love?" This time he put the vocal force on "anything," rather than "love."

"Nothing at all."

"Ah! Then Freud would have been right, eh?"

She picked up her cigarettes and looked at their sheathed box, smiling. "In some things, perhaps."

Quickly he grasped the bottom of the cellophane, pulled it off and held it in his hand, dramatically crushed it and dropped it in the ashtray, where it squeaked and writhed, expanded. "I'd like to teach you what being a woman is, if I may."

For a moment she said nothing, intent on the antics of the cellophane in the ashtray, then she struck a match and carefully set fire to it. "Why not?" she asked the brief flare. "Yes, why not?"

"Shall it be a divine thing of moonlight and roses, passionate wooing, or shall it be short and sharp, like an arrow?" he declaimed, hand on heart.

She laughed. "Really, Arthur! I hope it's long and sharp, myself. But no moonlight and roses, please. My stomach's not built for passionate wooing."

He stared at her a little sadly, shook his head. "Oh, Justine! Everyone's stomach is built for passionate wooing-even yours, you cold-blooded young vestal. One day, you wait and see. You'll long for it."

"Pooh!" She got up. "Come on, Arthur, let's get the deed over and done with before I change my mind."

"Now? Tonight?"

"Why on earth not? I've got plenty of money for a hotel room, if you're short."

The Hotel Metropole wasn't far away; they walked through the drowsing streets with her arm tucked cozily in his, laughing. It was too late for diners and too early for the theaters to be out, so there were few people around, just knots of American sailors off a visiting task force, and groups of young girls window-shopping with an eye to sailors. No one took any notice of them, which suited Arthur fine. He popped into a chemist shop while Justine waited outside, emerged beaming happily.

"Now we're all set, my love."

"What did you buy? French letters?"

He grimaced. "I should hope not. A French letter is like coming wrapped in a page of the Reader's Digest-condensed tackiness. No, I got you some jelly. How do you know about French letters, anyway?"

"After seven years in a Catholic boarding school? What do you think we did? Prayed?" She grinned. "I admit we didn't do much, but we talked about everything."

Mr. and Mrs. Smith surveyed their kingdom, which wasn't bad for a Sydney hotel room of that era. The days of the Hilton were still to come. It was very large, and had superb views of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. There was no bathroom, of course, but there was a basin and ewer on a marble-topped stand, a fitting accompaniment to the enormous Victorian relics of furniture.

"Well, what do I do now?" she asked, pulling the curtains back. "It's a beautiful view, isn't it?"

"Yes. As to what you do now, you take your pants off, of course."

"Anything else?" she asked mischievously.

He sighed. "Take it all off, Justine! If you don't feel skin with skin it isn't nearly so good."

Neatly and briskly she got out of her clothes, not a scrap coyly, clambered up on the bed and spread her legs apart. "Is this right, Arthur?"

"Good Lord!" he said, folding his trousers carefully; his wife always looked to see if they were crushed.

"What? What's the matter?"

"You really are a redhead, aren't you?"

"What did you expect, purple feathers?"

"Facetiousness doesn't set the right mood, darling, so stop it this instant." He sucked in his belly, turned, strutted to the bed and climbed onto it, began dropping expert little kisses down the side of her face, her neck, over her left breast. "Mmmmmm, you're nice." His arms went around her. "There! Isn't this nice?"

"I suppose so. Yes, it is quite nice."

Silence fell, broken only by the sound of kisses, occasional murmurs. There was a huge old dressing table at the far end of the bed, its mirror still tilted to reflect love's arena by some erotically minded previous tenant.

"Put out the light, Arthur."

"Darling, no! Lesson number one. There's no aspect of love which won't bear the light."

Having done the preparatory work with his fingers and deposited the jelly where it was supposed to be, Arthur managed to get himself between Justine's legs. A bit sore but quite comfortable, if not lifted into ecstasy at least feeling rather motherly, Justine looked over Arthur's shoulder and straight down the bed into the mirror.

Foreshortened, their legs looked weird with his darkly matted ones sandwiched between her smooth defreckled ones; however, the bulk of the image in the mirror consisted of Arthur's buttocks, and as he maneuvered they spread and contracted, hopped up and down, with two quiffs of yellow hair like Dagwood's just poking above the twin globes and waving at her cheerfully.

Justine looked; looked again. She stuffed her fist against her mouth wildly, gurgling and moaning.

"There, there, my darling, it's all right! I've broken you already, so it can't hurt too much," he whispered.

Her chest began to heave; he wrapped his arms closer about her and murmured inarticulate endearments.

Suddenly her head went back, her mouth opened in a long, agonized wail, and became peal after peal of uproarious laughter. And the more limply furious he got, the harder she laughed, pointing her finger helplessly toward the foot of the bed, tears streaming down her face. Her whole body was convulsed, but not quite in the manner poor Arthur had envisioned.

In many ways Justine was a lot closer to Dane than their mother was, and what they felt for Mum belonged to Mum. It didn't impinge upon or clash with what they felt for each other. That had been forged very early, and had grown rather than diminished. By the time Mum was freed from her Drogheda bondage they were old enough to be at Mrs. Smith's kitchen table, doing their correspondence lessons; the habit of finding solace in each other had been established for all time.

Though they were very dissimilar in character, they also shared many tastes and appetites, and those they didn't share they tolerated in each other with instinctive respect, as a necessary spice of difference. They knew each other very well indeed. Her natural tendency was to deplore human failings in others and ignore them in herself; his natural tendency was to understand and forgive human failings in others, and be merciless upon them in himself. She felt herself invincibly strong; he knew himself perilously weak.

And somehow it all came together as a nearly perfect friendship, in the name of which nothing was impossible. However, since Justine was by far the more talkative, Dane always got to hear a lot more about her and what she was feeling than the other way around. In some respects she was a little bit of a moral imbecile, in that nothing was sacred, and he understood that his function was to provide her with the scruples she lacked within herself. Thus he accepted his role of passive listener with a tenderness and compassion which would have irked Justine enormously had she suspected them. Not that she ever did; she had been bending his ear about absolutely anything and everything since he was old enough to pay attention.

"Guess what I did last night?" she asked, carefully adjusting her big straw hat so her face and neck were well shaded.

"Acted in your first starring role," Dane said.

"Prawn! As if I wouldn't tell you so you could be there to see me. Guess again."

"Finally copped a punch Bobbie meant for Billie."

"Cold as a stepmother's breast."

He shrugged his shoulders, bored. "Haven't a clue."

They were sitting in the Domain on the grass, just below the Gothic bulk of Saint Mary's Cathedral. Dane had phoned to let Justine know he was coming in for a special ceremony in the cathedral, and could she meet him for a while first in the Dom? Of course she could; she was dying to tell him the latest episode.

Almost finished his last year at Riverview, Dane was captain of the school, captain of the cricket team, the Rugby, handball and tennis teams. And dux of his class into the bargain. At seventeen he was two inches over six feet, his voice had settled into its final baritone, and he had miraculously escaped such afflictions as pimples, clumsiness and a bobbing Adam's apple. Because he was so fair he wasn't really shaving yet, but in every other way he looked more like a young man than a schoolboy. Only the Riverview uniform categorized him.

It was a warm, sunny day. Dane removed his straw boater school hat and stretched out on the grass, Justine sitting hunched beside him, her arms about her knees to make sure all exposed skin was shaded. He opened one lazy blue eye in her direction.

"What did you do last night, Jus?"

"I lost my virginity. At least I think I did."

Both his eyes opened. "You're a prawn."

"Pooh! High time, I say. How can I hope to be a good actress if I don't have a clue what goes on between men and women?"

"You ought to save yourself for the man you marry."

Her face twisted in exasperation. "Honestly, Dane, sometimes you're so archaic I'm embarrassed! Suppose I don't meet the man I marry until I'm forty? What do you expect me to do? Sit on it all those years? Is that what you're going to do, save it for marriage?"

"I don't think I'm going to get married."

"Well, nor am I. In which case, why tie a blue ribbon around it and stick it in my nonexistent hope chest? I don't want to die wondering."

He grinned. "You can't, now." Rolling over onto his stomach, he propped his chin on his hand and looked at her steadily, his face soft, concerned. "Was it all right? I mean, was it awful? Did you hate it?"

Her lips twitched, remembering. "I didn't hate it, at any rate. It wasn't awful, either. On the other hand, I'm afraid I don't see what everyone raves about. Pleasant is as far as I'm prepared to go. And it isn't as if I chose just anyone; I selected someone very attractive and old enough to know what he was doing."

He sighed. "You are a prawn, Justine. I'd have been a lot happier to hear you say, 'He's not much to look at, but we met and I couldn't help myself.' I can accept that you don't want to wait until you're married, but it's still something you've got to want because of the person. Never because of the act, Jus. I'm not surprised you weren't ecstatic."

All the gleeful triumph faded from her face. "Oh, damn you, now you've made me feel awful! If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were trying to put me down-or my motives, at any rate."

"But you do know me better, don't you? I'd never put you down, but sometimes your motives are plain thoughtlessly silly." He adopted a tolling, monotonous voice. "I am the voice of your conscience, Justine O'Neill."

"You are, too, you prawn." Shade forgotten, she flopped back on the grass beside him so he couldn't see her face. "Look, you know why. Don't you?"

"Oh, Jussy," he said sadly, but whatever he was going to add was lost, for she spoke again, a little savagely.

"I'm never, never, never going to love anyone! If you love people, they kill you. If you need people, they kill you. They do, I tell you!"

It always hurt him, that she felt left out of love, and hurt more that he knew himself the cause. If there was one overriding reason why she was so important to him, it was because she loved him enough to bear no grudges, had never made him feel a moment's lessening of her love through jealousy or resentment. To him, it was a cruel fact that she moved on an outer circle while he was the very hub. He had prayed and prayed things would change, but they never did. Which hadn't lessened his faith, only pointed out to him with fresh emphasis that somewhere, sometime, he would have to pay for the emotion squandered on him at her expense. She put a good face on it, had managed to convince even herself that she did very well on that outer orbit, but he felt her pain. He knew. There was so much worth loving in her, so little worth loving in himself. Without a hope of understanding differently, he assumed he had the lion's share of love because of his beauty, his more tractable nature, his ability to communicate with his mother and the other Drogheda people. And because he was male. Very little escaped him beyond what he simply couldn't know, and he had had Justine's confidence and companionship in ways no one else ever had. Mum mattered to Justine far more than she would admit.

But I will atone, he thought. I've had everything. Somehow I've got to pay it back, make it up to her.

Suddenly he chanced to see his watch, came to his feet bonelessly; huge though he admitted his debt to his sister was, to Someone else he owed even more.

"I've got to go, Jus."

"You and your bloody Church! When are you going to grow out of it?"

"Never, I hope."

"When will I see you?"

"Well, since today's Friday, tomorrow of course, eleven o'clock, here."

"Okay. Be a good boy."

He was already several yards away, Riverview boater back on his head, but he turned to smile at her. "Am I ever anything else?"

She grinned. "Bless you, no. You're too good to be true; I'm the one always in trouble. See you tomorrow."

There were huge padded red leather doors inside the vestibule of Saint Mary's; Dane poked one open and slipped inside. He had left Justine a little earlier than was strictly necessary, but he always liked to get into a church before it filled, became a shifting focus of sighs, coughs, rustles, whispers. When he was alone it was so much better. There was a sacristan kindling branches of candles on the high altar; a deacon, he judged unerringly. Head bowed, he genuflected and made the Sign of the Cross as he passed in front of the tabernacle, then quietly slid into a pew.

On his knees, he put his head on his folded hands and let his mind float freely. He didn't consciously pray, but rather became an intrinsic part of the atmosphere, which he felt as dense yet ethereal, unspeakably holy, brooding. It was as if he had turned into a flame in one of the little red glass sanctuary lamps, always just fluttering on the brink of extinction, sustained by a small puddle of some vital essence, radiating a minute but enduring glow out into the far darknesses. Stillness, formlessness, forgetfulness of his human identity; these were what Dane got from being in a church. Nowhere else did he feel so right, so much at peace with himself, so removed from pain. His lashes lowered, his eyes closed.

From the organ gallery came the shuffling of feet, a preparatory wheeze, a breathy expulsion of air from pipes. The Saint Mary's Cathedral Boys' School choir was coming in early to sandwich a little practice between now and the coming ritual. It was only a Friday midday Benediction, but one of Dane's friends and teachers from Riverview was celebrating it, and he had wanted to come.

The organ gave off a few chords, quietened into a rippling accompaniment, and into the dim stone-lace arches one unearthly boy's voice soared, thin and high and sweet, so filled with innocent purity the few people in the great empty church closed their eyes, mourned for that which could never come to them again.

Panis angelicus Fit panis hominum, Dat panis coelicus Figuris terminum, O res mirabilis, Manducat Dominus, Pauper, pauper, Servus et humilis....

Bread of angels, heavenly bread, O thing of wonder. Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice! Let Thine ear be attuned to the sounds of my supplication. Turn not away, O Lord, turn not away. For Thou art my Sovereign, my Master, my God, and I am Thy humble servant. In Thine eyes only one thing counts, goodness. Thou carest not if Thy servants be beautiful or ugly. To Thee only the heart matters; in Thee all is healed, in Thee I know peace.

Lord, it is lonely. I pray it be over soon, the pain of life. They do not understand that I, so gifted, find so much pain in living. But Thou dost, and Thy comfort is all which sustains me. No matter what Thou requirest of me, O Lord, shall be give, for I love Thee. And if I might presume to ask anything of Thee, it is that in Thee all else shall be forever forgotten....

"You're very quiet, Mum," said Dane. "Thinking of what? Of Drogheda?"

"No," said Meggie drowsily. "I'm thinking that I'm getting old. I found half a dozen grey hairs this morning, and my bones ache."

"You'll never be old, Mum," he said comfortably.

"I wish that were true, love, but unfortunately it isn't. I'm beginning to need the borehead, which is a sure sign of old age."

They were lying in the warm winter sun on towels spread over the Drogheda grass, by the borehead. At the far end of the great pool boiling water thundered and splashed, the reek of sulphur drifted and floated into nothing. It was one of the great winter pleasures, to swim in the borehead. All the aches and pains of encroaching age were soothed away, Meggie thought, and turned to lie on her back, her head in the shade of the log on which she and Father Ralph had sat so long ago. A very long time ago; she was unable to conjure up even a faint echo of what she must have felt when Ralph had kissed her.

Then she heard Dane get up, and opened her eyes. He had always been her baby, her lovely little boy; though she had watched him change and grow with proprietary pride, she had done so with an image of the laughing baby superimposed on his maturing face. It had not yet occurred to her that actually he was no longer in any way a child.

However, the moment of realization came to Meggie at that instant, watching him stand outlined against the crisp sky in his brief cotton swimsuit.

My God, it's all over! The babyhood, the boyhood. He's a man. Pride, resentment, a female melting at the quick, a terrific consciousness of some impending tragedy, anger, adoration, sadness; all these and more Meggie felt, looking up at her son. It is a terrible thing to create a man, and more terrible to create a man like this. So amazingly male, so amazingly beautiful.

Ralph de Bricassart, plus a little of herself. How could she not be moved at seeing in its extreme youth the body of the man who had joined in love with her? She closed her eyes, embarrassed, hating having to think of her son as a man. Did he look at her and see a woman these days, or was she still that wonderful cipher, Mum? God damn him, God damn him! How dared he grow up?

"Do you know anything about women, Dane?" she asked suddenly, opening her eyes again.

He smiled. "The birds and the bees, you mean?"

"That you know, with Justine for a sister. When she discovered what lay between the covers of physiology textbooks she blurted it all out to everyone. No, I mean have you ever put any of Justine's clinical treatises into practice?"

His head moved in a quick negative shake, he slid down onto the grass beside her and looked into her face. "Funny you should ask that, Mum. I've been wanting to talk to you about it for a long time, but I didn't know how to start."