She pondered the other side of the question.

“Not much,” she said truthfully.

“Then let’s leave it all alone, and just be decent and simple, like proper human beings with one another. Be damned to the artificial sex-compulsion! I refuse it!”

Connie knew he was right, really. Yet it left her feeling so forlorn, so forlorn and stray. Like a chip on a dreary pond, she felt. What was the point, of her or anything?

It was her youth which rebelled. These men seemed so old and cold. Everything seemed old and cold. And Michaelis let one down so; he was no good. The men didn’t want one; they just didn’t really want a woman, even Michaelis didn’t.

And the bounders who pretended they did, and started working the sex game, they were worse than ever.