Ruzena was sitting at a small table in the huge room in the thermal building where, after undergoing treatment, women rested in beds lined up against the walls. She had just received the charts of two new patients. She filled in the date and gave the women towels, large white sheets, and keys to the changing cubicles. Then she looked at her watch and headed for the adjoining room (she was wearing only a white smock over her bare body, because the tiled rooms were filled with hot steam), to the pool where some twenty naked women were splashing about in the miraculous spring waters. She called three of them by name, to tell them their time was up. The ladies obediently left the pool, shaking their bulky, dripping breasts and following Ruzena, who escorted them back to the treatment room to lie down on vacant beds. One after another, she wrapped each in a sheet, wiped each one's eyes with a bit of it, and covered her with a warm blanket. The ladies gave her a smile, but Ruzena didn't smile in return.

It is surely not pleasant to have been born in a small town through which every year ten thousand women but practically no young men pass; unless she moves elsewhere, a woman will have a precise idea by the age of fifteen of all the erotic possibilities her lifetime will offer her. And how is she to move elsewhere? Her employers did not readily release their employees, and

Ruzena's parents protested vehemently whenever she hinted at moving away.