If only that had been all that Bob intended to do to punish me. But it wasn't. Soon I learned the extent to which his jealousy was driving him.

He repeated the insult he had first hurled at us. Then he turned and raced across the sand to where he had parked his car behind a clump of cypress. Yet, even when the sound of his words had faded into silence, I still could hear their vicious ringing in my mind, "You filthy Queers!"

A moment later we heard the roar of Bob's car motor as he sped toward the highway.

When Jan and I recovered our composure, she held my hand between her palms, protectively.

"Melba," she said. "He'll never understand how it is with us. That's why he thinks we're filthy and queer. But no matter what anyone ever thinks, we know in our hearts, that our love and its expression is clean, and right for us. We'll have problems in our life together, darling. But as long as we don't let others make us ashamed of being as nature made us, and as long as we're careful not to do anything publicly to offend them--we'll make a go of it."

Solemnly we got in Jan's car and drove home.

Thoughts kept running through my head. We hadn't dreamed that anyone was in miles of us. I hadn't suspected that Bob would deliberately follow Jan and me to the beach, hide behind the cypress clump all afternoon and spy on us. Now I realized that all that time his inner rage had been fueled by our happiness. I thought his verbal abuse was the discharge of his fury. But it was only the trigger to set it off. That I learned to my sorrow.

Jan kissed me goodnight, and I lingered on the front porch to wave to her as she drove away. Oh why didn't I turn at once and go into the house? But I didn't. I was wrapped up in dreams of a future that Jan and I would share. The wind from the ocean was chill but

my skin was so warm and my face so flushed that it felt pleasant to me. I stood there looking up at our wishing star.

Then a swift movement, a figure pounced from the oleander bushes, and a hand clamped over my mouth. I felt myself dragged from the porch, pulled over the grass, and finally dumped under a pine tree.

"Make one peep and I'll strangle you!" Bob threatened, panting. "I mean it!" He tore my blouse wide open. Roughly he handled my breast.

I fought against him.

Then with his right hand still clamped over my mouth, with his left hand he literally ripped my shorts from

me.

Terror seized me. I wanted to scream, but my throat seemed to be closing, my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth. Bob was no longer a jealous fellow. Now he was a madman! He was filled with savage vigor, as he flung himself on top of me. Then it was as if a poker was being rammed into my body. I felt a tearing of that bit of skin that testified to my virginity.

"Oh my God!" I murmured.

As Bob's assault continued I remembered the tenderness yet strength of Jan's arms wrapped around me, while I responded to her embrace. I recalled the softof Jan's throbbing body rubbing rhythmically against mine, while her murmurs of love came thrillingly from her warm lips that caressed my ear.

ness

In contrast this fierce, rough intrusion of his hard body that Bob was savagely forcing on me, was brutal! I found no pleasure in it. Only pain and deep inner sense of revulsion. I was being defiled! Because nature had not planned this for me.

I had found my way with Jan. We loved each other. I could never love Bob. My emotional nature was not directed toward males. Jan satisfied my every amorous need, my every psychological need for a sense of be-