We did. That was months ago. What frightens me now is-why did I go on with it? It wasn't the self-flattery: I can cure this man. Not at all. I know better, I've known too many of the sexual cripples. It wasn't really compassion. Though that was part of it. I am always amazed, in myself and in other women, at the strength of our need to bolster men up. This is ironical, living as we do in a time of men's criticising us for being 'castrating,' etc.-all the other words and phrases of the same kind. (Nelson says his wife is 'castrating'-this makes me angry, thinking of the misery she must have lived through.) For the truth is, women have this deep instinctive need to build a man up as a man. Molly for instance. I suppose this is because real men become fewer and fewer, and we are frightened, trying to create men.