Mrs. Franklin found her throat suddenly constricting and a weird, loud pounding of breath in her chest. Girls, to make love with… Her head whirled, but not with shock. That was the galling part – she was a good woman in her own mind, a respectable grass-roots widow with a child to raise, who had successfully placed sex in the back of her mind since her husband's death, and she should be shocked. But she wasn't. Stoically she had spent six years with only the memories of Howie's wonderful love-making and his delightful ways of causing her utmost joy, and though she'd been on dates now and then, there'd never been a man among the fishermen and other acquaintances she and her late Howie had known that had attracted her. Even then it wouldn't have meant sexual contact, for she would save herself for marriage, as she had the first time.

But as she looked up at the frank, open expression on David Preston's face, she felt no bitter and righteous indignation. She felt something in its place – what? It was a shock, then, a heart-quickening, blood-pulsing shock to realize then what was causing the turmoil in her mind. She was saddened! She was standing there, having met a man for less than fifteen minutes, and she was dismayed to learn that he knew other women, that he was interested in making love to them instead of… instead of her!

Mrs. Marleen Franklin, a woman who had always prided herself in being honest with herself above all, of accepting her frailties but determined to overcome them and be a strong and resourceful person, of taking on life's responsibilities and working without rancor for a better day, a happier life, felt her body quiver inside, though its fleshy shell of skin remained motionless, if slightly blushing. She was actually jealous of the other women in her new boarder, David Preston's, life, and that was a bruise to her disciplined morality.

No, she couldn't turn him out, not for being a man.