“Did you love her very much?”

“Very much.”

“And you came back to see me today because you wanted-to make love to me?”

“Partly that. Partly because I liked you and I wanted to know you. I was surprised when I realized you weren’t an overt lesbian. And then I figured you out.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, I decided that you were gay without knowing it. The instincts are there. The way you reacted toward your husband, the way heterosexual relations did nothing for you. You were a lesbian but no one had shown you the way.”

“Maybe I’m just frigid.”

“No.”

“You seem so certain. How do you how that?”

“You know it yourself. You’ve had sexual feelings. You’re a sexual person, Rhoda. It shows in the way you talk and the way you move and everything else. It shows in your own awareness of your own body. You couldn’t possibly be sexless.” She smiled. “There are sexless people, Rhoda. I’ve met some of them, women with no feelings in their bodies. Some of them play with lesbianism when nothing else works for them, and lesbianism leaves them just as cold. They can’t love, they don’t have love living inside them. I’ve met them and I know what they’re like. But you’re not like that, Rhoda.”

“I don’t know.”

“I do.”

She lit another cigarette. Her hands were steadier now. She felt excitement percolating within herself, but she had no immediate fear, no odd feeling of anxiety. The discussion was a calm and cool one now. They were talking about her sexual impulses, analyzing her possible homosexuality in a slightly dispassionate fashion, and she was quite relaxed about it. The undercurrent of tension and excitement was not unpleasant or disturbing.

“You were made to love,” Megan told her, “You tried to give that love to a man. You know how impossible that is. Why don’t you try giving it to me?”

“I-”

“You can’t bury it. You’ve been trying to do that. You know how it works out.”