To me, interesting as this might have been, considering that I was still concerned about the ringworms, another fact had emerged which transcended it in importance. Somehow I hadn't paid such close attention to the details of the aftermath—how she had picked herself up, begged a ride to New York, borrowed some clothes from Florrie, and so on. I remember having interrupted her to ask how long ago it was that the rape had occurred and my impression is that her answer was rather vague. But suddenly, while trying to put two and two together, I realized that she was talking about Carruthers, about living at his place and cooking for him and so on. How had that happened?

«But I just told you,» she said. «I went to his place because I didn't dare to go home looking as I did. He was terribly kind. He treated me as if I were his own daughter. It was his doctor I went to—he took me there himself.»

I supposed from this that living with Carruthers meant that she had been living with him at the place where she had once given me the rendezvous, where Carruthers had walked in on us unexpectedly and where he had made a jealous scene. But I was mistaken.

«It was long before that,» she said. «He was living uptown then,» and she mentioned the name of some famous American humorist with whom Carruthers then shared a flat.

«Why you were almost a child then—unless you're lying about your age.»

I was seventeen. I had run away from home during the war. I went to New Jersey and took a job in a munitions plant. I only stayed a few months. Carruthers made me leave the job and go back to college.»

«So you did finish your studies?» I said, a bit confused by all the contradictions.

«Of course I did! I wish you'd stop insin...»

«And you met Carruthers in the munitions plant?»

«Not in the plant. He was working in a dye factory nearby. He used to take me into New York now and then. He was the vice-president, I think. Anyway, he could do as he pleased. He used to take me to the theatre and to night clubs... He liked to dance.»

«And you weren't living with him then?»

«No, that was later. Even uptown, after the rape, I didn't live with him. I did the cooking and the housework to show him that I was grateful for all he had done. He never asked me to be his mistress. He wanted to marry me... but he didn't have the heart to leave his wife. She was an invalid...»

«You mean sexually?»

«I told you all about her. What difference does it make?»

«I'm all balled up,» I said.

«But I'm telling you the truth. You asked me to tell you everything. Now you don't believe me.» At this moment the horrible suspicion flashed through my mind that the «rape» (and perhaps it hadn't been a rape!) had occurred in a past all too recent. Perhaps the «Italian» with the insatiable prick had been nothing more than an amorous lumberman in the North words. No doubt there had been more than one «rape» pulled off on these midnight automobile rides which hot-blooded young girls indulge in after hitting up the flask. The image of her standing alone and naked in a wet field at dawn, her body covered with cuts and bruises, the uterine wall broken down the rectum mutilated, her shoes gone, her eyes black and blue... well, that was the sort of thing a romantic young lady might cook up to cover a careless lapse that ends with gonorrhea and haemorrhoids, though the haemorrhoids did seem a bit gratuit.

«I think we'd better go to the doctor to-morrow, the both of us, and have a blood test taken,» I said quietly.

«Of course I'll go with you,» she replied.

We embraced one another silently and then we slid into a long fuck.

A disquieting thought now asserted itself. I had a hunch that she would find an excuse for postponing the visit to the doctor a few days. In that time, if it were a disease that I had, I could have communicated it to her. I dismissed the thought as absurd. A doctor could probably tell by examination whether she had given it to me or I to her. And how could I have caught a dose, except through her?

Before we dozed off I learned that she had had her hymen broken at the age of fifteen. That too was her mother's fault. Yes, they had been driving her crazy at home by their talk of money, money, money all the time. So she had taken a job as a cashier in a little cage in front of a movie house. It wasn't long before the proprietor, who owned a string of movie houses throughout the country, had taken notice of her. He had a Rolls Royce car, wore the best clothes, spats lemon-colored gloves, a boutonniere and everything that goes with the part. He was rolling in money. Always peeling off hundred dollar bills from his big wad. Fingers studded with diamond rings. Nails beautifully manicured. A man of undefinable age, probably in his late forties. A highly sexed man of leisure who was always on the prowl. She had accepted his gifts of course—but no monkey business. She knew she could twine him around her finger.

But then there was the pressure at home. No matter what she threw down on the table it was never enough.

So when he asked her one day if she would like to go to Chicago with him and open up a new theatre there she consented. She was certain she could handle him all right. Besides, she was dying to get out of New York, away from her parents, and so on.

He behaved like a perfect gentleman. Everything was going beautifully—he had given her a substantial raise, had bought her clothes, had taken her to the best places, all just as she had imagined it would be. Then, one night after dinner (he had bought tickets for the theatre) he came out with it bluntly. He wanted to know if she was still a virgin. She had been only too eager to tell him yes, thinking that her virginity was her protection. But to her amazement he then began a most frank and brutal confession in which he revealed the fact that his one and only obsession was to deflower young girls. He even confessed that it had cost him a pretty penny and had got him into serious scrapes. Apparently, however, he could do nothing to curb this passion. It was perverse, he confessed, but since he had the means to indulge his vice he had not bothered to cure it. He insinuated that there was nothing brutal about his procedure. He had always treated his victims with kindness and consideration. After all, they might well regard him as a benefactor later on. Sooner or later every young woman has to surrender her maidenhood. He would even go so far as to say that, since it had to be done, it were better to entrust the operation to a professional, a connoisseur, so to speak. Many young husbands were so clumsy and ineffectual that they often caused their wives to become frigid. Many a marital wreck might be traced back to that first night, he insisted smoothly and with undeniable truth.

In short, to hear her relate the incident, he was a most excellent pleader, skilled not only in the art of defloration but in the art of seduction.

«I thought to myself,» said Mona, «that if it was to be just once I could let myself do it. He had told me he would pay me a thousand dollars, and I knew what a thousand dollars meant to my mother and father. I felt that I could trust him.» «So you didn't go to the theatre that night?» «Yes, we did—but I had already promised him that I would go through with it. He said there was no hurry, I wasn't to worry about it. He assured me it wouldn't be too painful. He said he could trust me; he had been observing me for a long time and knew that I would behave sensibly. To prove his sincerity he offered to give me the money first. I wouldn't accept it. He had been very decent to me and I felt that I ought to go through with the bargain before accepting his money. As a matter of fact, Val, I began to take a fancy to him. It was shrewd of him not to push me into it. If he had I might have hated him afterwards. As it is I'm rather grateful to him—though it turned out to be worse than I had imagined it would.»