“You are apparently not ready to retire,” she said.
“No!” said Brenner. How absurd seemed the thought of trying to rest, let alone getting any sleep, lying there in the darkness, with that perfume in the air, understanding its meaning, knowing the proximity, and the nature and femininity, of the woman who wore it.
“I gather,” she said, “that with one such as you I may do much what I please.”
“For the moment,” said Brenner, carefully.
“I am not accustomed to being treated with such lenience,” she said.
“If you are going to be up,” he said, “get dressed!”
Quickly, clutching the sheet about her, she rose up and went to the wardrobe again. He did not, of course, watch her, as he was a gentleman, so to speak.
“I am dressed,” she announced.
Brenner regarded her, stunned.
“Cover yourself!” he said.
Laughing, she put the sheet again about her. Beneath it now she wore not the yellow silk, but another, a clinging, diaphanous scarlet silk. Her shoulders and belly were bared, and her left thigh. Her breasts were beautiful, sweet and full, in a soft halter of crossed silken bands. The drape of silk, open on the left, was low on her belly. It swirled about her ankles.
She sat on the floor, her knees drawn up, her back against the side of the bed, near him, the sheet wrapped demurely about her. She even tucked it more closely, more modestly, about her. This irritated him. She looked up, smiling. He could see her bared feet, and ankles, beneath the sheet. On her left ankle was the chain, and disk. He would have liked to have looked more closely at that. He did not do so, of course. He turned his eyes away.
“It is warm in here,” she said.
That was true. It probably had to do with comfort zones somewhat other than those which those of Brenner’s species might regard as optimum.
“With one such as you, it is true, is it not,” she asked, “that I may do much what I please?”
“Of course,” said Brenner.
“May I not then remove the sheet?” she asked.
“If you wish,” said Brenner, angrily.
“Surely it does not matter,” she said, “as you do not look upon me.”
Brenner kept his eyes away, angrily.
“And as you are of the home world,” she said, “it cannot matter anyway. One such as you, a true person, of the home world, merely accidentally male, anatomically, would scarcely notice such a thing. It would be meaningless to him.
“Of course, of course,” said Brenner, sweating.
“With one such as you I am safe.”
“Of course,” Brenner granted her.
He heard the rustle of the sheet. He also sensed that she had changed her position. “There,” she said. “That is better.”
He looked upon her, and gasped. She had moved a little, and now, where she had earlier knelt, half sat, half knelt, her weight much on her right thigh and the palms of her hands. The sheet had been put on the floor about her, in a circular pattern. In this fashion it contrasted with the dark boards of the floor, and the scarlet of the silk. As she was positioned, her left thigh was bared, a consequence of the draping of the silk doubtless, which silk, it seemed, doubtless inadvertently, like the sheet, was arranged flowingly, and beautifully, one might even have thought, did one not know better, artfully.
“It seems,” said Brenner, angrily, “that you choose to torture me.”
“You are of the home world,” she said. “Surely, in virtue of your conditioning, how I am, or might appear, does not matter. In virtue of your conditioning you cannot see me as what I am, a woman.”
“It seems you wish to be seen as an object,” he said.
“A woman,” she said.
“An object!” he said.
“An object of desire, I trust,” she said.
Brenner was silent, angry.
“A woman, the whole woman,” she said, “wishes to be seen as an object of desire.”
“You are sexual,” he said, angrily.
“Is that a reproach?” she asked.
He did not answer.
“Yes,” she said. “I am sexual! I do not deny it any longer. I am tired of denying it. I am tired of pretending to be what I am not.”
“You must keep such weaknesses to yourself,” he said.
“That is no more a weakness than the fact that I can think, that I can feel, that I breathe, that my heart beats.”
“Then it is an ugliness,” said Brenner.
“No!” she said. “No more than those other things, no more than thought and feeling, no more than