Across town from the Double-X Theater, Jackie Burnside sat at the dinette table with a Western Civilization book spread out before her. She had fallen behind in her reading this week, especially since her mother, Stella, had bought the handsome, lithe guard dog and brought him home to live with them. Kaiser was curled up under the table in a semi-sleep state, his big shapely head resting comfortably against the teenager's slender bare ankles. And although nothing untoward had happened between the blonde girl and the black-and-tan dog since that first afternoon, there was still a discernible tension between them, a sort of mutual bond building gradually until one day or night soon it was going to explode.

The TV was on, and the young coed could see the picture by merely twisting her head so she could peer around the short wall that divided the dining area from the living room. Strangely, the program was some kind of documentary on the history of man's best friend, and several times Jackie found herself leaning on her palms, watching the scenes of domesticated canine pets with their masters and mistresses. Once, during a sequence about police dogs, Kaiser even raised his head at the sound of a bark from a member of his own breed. It was intensely interesting to both dog and girl alike the way the beasts and their human owners seemed to take to each other, and the lengths to which either would go to protect and preserve the other.

Jackie was aware of Kaiser's hot breath on her ankles, and she reached down under the table to scratch the dog's sleek neck with her slender, long-nailed fingers. "We'll be just like those dogs and people, won't we, boy?" she murmured softly, and then turned her attention back to her reading.

But no matter how hard she tried to force herself to keep her attention on the book, the teenage student's mind seemed to wander. First, she saw a picture of a Roman lying on a low slab of marble in the book, and that reminded her of what her professor had said about Roman orgies. Supposedly, the Romans were a lot more "liberal" about sex than people gave them credit for, although most of the freedom was for men only.