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She who was always uneasy in advance about her every next step, suddenly felt completely relaxed. The alien life in which she had become involved was a life without shame, without biographical specifications, without past or future, without obligations; it was a life that was extraordinarily free. …

[...] She always blushed in advance at the idea that she was going to blush. She often longed to feel free and easy about her body, the way most of the women around her did. She had even invented a special course in self-persuasion: she would repeat to herself that at birth every human being receiv…

“Yes, go to sleep, why not?” Oh, it was like trying to pick a fight with a dog toy! “Just you go on off to sleep.”

At a few minutes before nine, William appeared, whistling.

Whistling! “Good practice session?” Otto said. His voice came out cracked, as if it had been hurled against the high prison walls of himself.

The older one even had a wife, whom Corinne treated with a stricken, fluttery deference as if she were a suitcase full of weapons-grade plutonium. The younger one was restlessly on his own. When, early in the evening the three stood and announced to Corinne with thuggish placidity that they were ab…