As a matter of fact, it was very seldom that Melissa ever consciously paid attention to what was reflected back to her in any mirror. Mirrors at the convent school were an anathema-spawners of sinful vanity. And, old habits were had to die.

Even now, Melissa wasn't much concerned with whether or not she was pretty, or any had new wrinkles, or was getting bags under her eyes, or was losing her peaches-and-cream complexion. Her constant stroking of her hair with the silver-handled pig-bristle bush had become an unconscious rhythm honed by constant routine.

Melissa's mind had first wandered back to that day in this very house when she and Creagon had been caught "playing with each other" (actually having long since progressed beyond that minor stage of the relationship, not that Melissa blamed Creagon, having long since put all of the blame on her own shapely shoulders). Then, finding those thoughts as disturbing as she had always found them (why had that silly bastard of a father told her he was sorry?), she let her mind drift elsewhere.

Back to John. Back to dear, sweet John, as he had once been. Back to John, the vulgarity he had become.

Melissa knew what John was doing out there in the bedroom at that moment. Oh, yes, she knew. He would have his large hand wrapped around his big, huge cock, and he would be pumping his prick languidly, just waiting for Melissa to step from the dressing room and see him. John would want to shock her, as if his own pleasure was somehow fed by his wife's continual embarrassment at his perverted antics.

To describe Melissa's feelings that first night in bed after John had returned home from Vietnam would have made a book-size volume of horror stories. To describe her feelings these years later, when John still refused to revert to his civilized state, would have been to describe frustrations, humiliations, and mortifications in the extreme.