"Been known to suffer from a touch of it myself, from time to time.

"Know what drives him, Nancy?

"Know what makes him do what he does?

"Know who he's actually attacking in his mind?

"Himself!"

"That's right! He sees in the other his own powerlessness, his own helplessness, his own fear and terror, reflected in his victim.

"He fears weakness in himself.

"He fears his own mortality, the end of his own life.

"And his fiendish acts are ceremonies, laying on of hands to a scapegoat, acts of exorcism to expel, not the demons within, but the mortality, the humanity, all the properties which render him man rather than God, man rather than even superman.

"And it is with him always, never leaving him, his fiendishness.

"Other men climax and relax, happy, contented, the memory of the pleasure beyond pleasure fresh within them.

"Not our boy Randy; no indeed.

"Each climax of his is a little death.

"It is impotence, however temporary, reasserting itself.

"So that the danger to his victims do not end with his climax. Rather, that merely intensifies it.

"Not I but you will die, bitch!

"I will go on and on forever!

"And never doubt for an instant but that that was exactly what was running through his sick mind, even when this picture was taken."

Chapter Four

Strange, Daisy thinks, that no sooner does he climax than Randy Buck is out of her and into the pool, swimming laps as though they had not just made love, ignoring her completely.

Maybe, she thinks, he knows.

Still, she has gotten him off.

And herself as well, even though she does not "love" him, does not, in the rutting, bitch-in-heat sense, desire him.

Wealthy, older man, young, beautiful girl with nothing, the theme was there, is here.

Traditional, acceptable, a trifle trite, perhaps, but they are doing it, are playing their roles properly.