to him.

I didn't realize then, that sooner or later, being an honest person, I would tell Granger the truth. At the time I thought it was noble of me to sacrifice my own yearnings, and to live the sort of "normal", (as my Mother called it,) life that my sister lived.

Granger enjoyed sex, but he wasn't highly sexed as I was. He wasn't too demanding. And I always cooperated sexually whenever he desired.

Sometimes he would smile at me, run his fingers through my long, honey-colored hair and say,

"Melba, you're the most passionate woman I've ever known. You're wonderful!"'

While my lips would part in a smile for Granger, my mind would be thinking, If he thinks I'm passionate with him, what would he think if he knew the way I' was with Jan? The comparison was, to me, like the popping of a cap pistol, and the roar of an atomic blast.

Granger thought he thrilled me as much as I thrilled him. I was glad. Yet, every time my husband kissed my breasts, my thoughts raced to Jan, and longing tortured me.

I remembered how the minute Jan undressed me, my nipples would harden. How they'd pop out full and bright pink, just when she looked at them. It always delighted her.

"Look at those rosebuds blooming for me," she'd say in her low, thrilling voice. And then she'd reach up and caress my breast. Later she'd lean over and take the "rosebuds" tenderly between her lips and cast a spell of passionate enchantment over me.

Once, remembering Jan, I sobbed while Granger's lips were circling my nipple. He believed what he heard were sobs of passion, so it was music to his ears. He could not guess that I cried out for the lost rapture that only Jan's lips could bring.

Granger often brought friends to our home, and he was proud of the way I made them welcome. Granger made no secret of the fact that he hoped we would have a blessed event to announce before another year had passed. I was willing for that to happen.

In my new life with my husband I was not really happy because I could never be really happy apart from Jan. But I was content.

And then, with the unannounced suddeness of a flash of summer lightning, Bob came home.

From the morning he returned from Texas, he made it evident he meant to see me, often. He sent me red, hothouse roses and a note. The note read, "From your childhood friend, who hopes to renew an old and very close contact with you.' " And Bob saw to it that the roses and the note arrived when my husband was at home, and was sure to see both.

As I stood staring at Bob's bold scrawl on that note, before I passed it to my husband, I knew that Bob deliberately used the word "contact" to humiliate me.

My husband never suspected what it really meant, thank God.

Bob seemed to turn up everywhere Granger and I went. I knew he'd ease his way into Granger's favor, and that as soon as he got a chance he'd be coming to our home at my husband's invitation. Bob would feel smug and safe, knowing I wouldn't tell Granger why I disliked him.

And that is exactly what happened. Time after time, I had the galling experience of seeing the man who had once raped me, now sitting at my husband's table, smiling at us. I knew Bob was inwardly laughing at me. I was afraid.

I asked Mother and Hal, even Bob's parents to try and keep Bob away from me. But they told me they believed it was better to accept him as a friend, and let by-gones be by-gones.