"Very well," I said, irritably.

"Please, don't leave," she said. "I do wish, desperately, to talk to you, Jason."

I sat down. We scarcely knew one another, and yet she had used my first name. I suppose I was weak. I felt mollified. Too, I was curious. Too, she was beautiful.

"Thank you, Jason," she said.

I was startled. She had thanked me. I had not expected that. I felt then that perhaps, truly, she did wish to speak with me, though for what reason I could not conjecture. Surely our politics were insufficiently congruent, as she must now understand, to motivate any expectation on her part that I would supply much positive reinforcement for her own views.

"Why do you wish to speak to me?" I asked. "Before you scarcely passed the time of day with me."

"There are reasons," she said.

"Before you would not speak with me," I said.

"You frightened me, Jason," she said.

"How?" I said.

"There was something about you," she said. "I do not know really what it was. There is a kind of power or masculinity about you." She looked up, quickly. "I find it offensive, you understand."

"All right," I said.

"But it made me feel feminine, weak. I do not wish to be feminine. I do not wish to be weak."

"I'm sorry if I said or did anything to alarm you," I said.

"It was nothing you said or did," she said. "It was rather something which I sensed you were."

"What?" I asked.

"Different from the others," she said.

"What?" I asked.

"A man," she said.

"That is silly," I said. "You must know hundreds of men."

"Not like you," she said.

"What were you afraid of," I asked, "that I would tell you to go into the kitchen and cook?"

"No," she smiled.

"That I would tell you to go into the bedroom and strip?" I asked.

"Please, Jason," she said, putting her head down, reddening.

"I'm sorry," I said. Inwardly, however, I smiled. I thought it might be quite pleasant to direct the lovely Miss Henderson to enter the bedroom of my small student's apartment and remove her clothing.

"There are various reasons I wanted to speak to you," she said.

"I'm listening," I told her.

"I don't like you, you understand," she said.

"All right," I said.

"And we women aren't afraid of men like you any more," she said.

"All right," I said.

She didn't speak, though. She put her head down.

This evening she was dressed as I had never seen her before. Normally she wore garb of the sort tacitly prescribed for her in her intellectual environs, slacks and pants of various sorts, and shirts and jackets, sometimes with ties. Imitation-male clothing, interestingly enough, is often adopted by individuals who are the most vehement in their claims to be women. It is possible, of course, that those who make the most noise about being women are the least feminine of all. But such matters are perhaps best left to psychologists.

"You look very lovely tonight," I said.

She looked up at me. She wore an off-the-shoulder, svelte, white, satin-sheath gown. She had a small, silver-beaded purse. Her wrists and neck were bare. She had lovely, rounded forearms, and small wrists and hands. Her fingers were small, but lovely and delicate. She did not wear nail polish. On her feet were golden pumps, with a wisp of golden straps.

"Thank you," she said.

I regarded her. She had lovely, exciting shoulders. I saw that her breasts would be very white. Her bosom, small, but sweetly swelling, concealed, strained against the tight satin sheath. I felt I would like to tear the garment from her and throw her on her back, naked and helpless, on the table. When she was crying to be used, I could throw her to the floor, there to make her mine. I thrust such thoughts from my mind.

"But that is surely not the standard uniform in your department," I said.

"I do not know what is going on with me," she said, miserably. She shook her head. "I had to talk to someone."

"Why me?" I asked.

"There are reasons," she said. "Among them is the fact that you are different from the others. I know what the others will say and think. I want someone who thinks for himself„ who can be objective. In our short conversations it became clear to me that you are one who thinks not in terms of words but in terms of things and realities. Your thinking is less analogous to the playing of tapes than it is to the photography of facts."

"Many thousands of individuals think in terms of the world, its nature and promise," I said, "not in terms of slogans and verbal formulas. Indeed, those who control the world cannot afford not to. They may use verbal formulas to manipulate the masses, but, in their own thinking, they cannot be limited in this fashion or they would not have come to their positions of power."

"I am accustomed," she said, "to those who think only verbally."

"The academic world, too often," I said, "is a refuge and haven for those who cannot manage more. Academic thinking does not have the same sanctions of success and failure as practical thought. The aeronautical engineer makes a mistake and a plane crashes. A historian writes a stupid book and is promoted."

She looked down. "Let us order," she said.

"I thought you wanted to talk," I said.

"Let us order now," she said.

"All right," I said. "Would you like a drink?"

"Yes," she said.

We ordered drinks, and later, dinner. The waiter was attentive, but not obtrusive. We drank and ate in silence. After dessert, we sipped coffee.

"Jason," she said, breaking the silence, "I told you before that I didn't understand what was going on with me. I don't."

"You wished to talk to someone," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"Proceed," I said.

"Don't tell me what to do," she said. "Don't tell me what to do!"

"Very well," I said. "Shall I call for the check?"

"Not yet," she said. "Please, wait. I-I do not know where to begin."

I sipped the coffee. I saw no point in hurrying her. I was curious.

"You will think that I'm mad," she said.

"If you will forgive the observation," I said, "you seem to me, rather, to be frightened."

She looked at me, suddenly. "A few months ago," she said, "I began to have unusual feelings, and urges."

"What sorts of feelings and urges?" I asked.

"They are the sort of thing which people used to think of as feminine," she said, "when people still believed in femininity."

"Most people still believe in that sort of thing," I said. "Your official position, whatever its political values, is a perversion not only of truth but of biology."

"Do you think so?" she asked.

"Clearly," I said. "But I would be less worried, if I were you, about what people believed to be true than about what was true. If you have deeply feminine urges you have them. It is that simple. Let people who have never truly experienced femininity argue about whether it exists or not. Let those who know it exists, because they have experienced it, set themselves to different problems."

"But I am fearful of the nature of my femininity," she said. "I have had frightening dreams."

"What sort of dreams?" I asked.

"I hardly dare speak of them to a man," she said, "they are so horrifying."

I said nothing. I did not wish to put her under any undue stress.

"I have often dreamed," she said, "that I was a female slave, that I was kept in rags or naked, that a steel collar was put on my neck, that I was branded, that I was subject to discipline, that I must serve a man."

"I see," I said. My hands gripped the table. My vision, for a moment, swam. I looked at the small beauty. I had not known I could feel such sudden lust, such startling, astonishing, maddening desire for a woman. I dared not move in the slightest.

"I went to a psychiatrist," she said. "But he was a man. He told me such thoughts were perfectly normal and natural."