"The girl?" the gaunt woman cut in sharply.
For answer the tall surgeon turned and walked across the laboratory to a small panel set in the wall. He gripped the projecting knob of the panel and turned it about in his hand and the thin partition of metal glided back into the wall, revealing a glimmering square of radiance.
"You may come out now," the surgeon said. "We have decided to conduct the final test immediately. You have received your instructions and should be prepared to display your great beauty without fear and without shame."
A soft, feminine voice, so strangely beautiful and well-modulated that it seemed almost musical came in reply from deep within the radiance but the Monitor could not catch what was said. She heard only the surgeon's words as he turned, stepping back from the panel aperture and facing her again.
"She has been schooled in every amorous enchantment," he said. "She knows how to dance and sing, and use her body's grace as only the love-privileged can do, when they have been taught far more than the love-privileged are permitted to know. Even when they abandon themselves to love in the mating centers the love-privileged know that what they do must be veiled in secrecy, hidden from the light of day. They know that what they do is really shameful, a necessary evil, and that it would bring a blush to even the virginal cheeks of a woman such as you.
"Only this girl has been schooled in all of the ancient rites, the forbidden mysteries of love. Only this girl can tempt a man to madness without degrading herself in any way. For what she does she does voluntarily, as a great sacrifice, and in the interests of science. If the experiment is successful we will honor her for her courage and even though she is one of the sex-privileged we will think of her as pure. We will think of her as a dedicated specialist, just as selfless in her devotion to all that is best in our society as an engineer or surgeon or skilled industrial worker, and we will know, and be grateful deep in our hearts, that she has helped to save us all."
The gaunt woman's cheeks had flushed scarlet and anger flamed in her eyes. But before she could reprimand the surgeon for speaking so immoderately—was he secretly the girl's lover?—the woman he was defending emerged from the panel aperture and stood with the radiance at her back and her head held high, her eyes darting from the Monitor and the four surgeons to the still form on the table.
The gaunt woman stared at her with a sharp intake of her breath. That a beauty so dazzling should dare to flaunt itself in proud defiance before the eyes of a Monitor who had never given a thought to her own beauty or lack of it, seemed outrageous, too intolerable to be endured.
So great was the girl's beauty that it seemed almost to pass beyond perfection, to envelop her in an aura that was individual and unique, setting her apart from all other women, and igniting a spark of ardent responsiveness in the four surgeons which was plainly visible in their eyes. That the surgeons had looked upon the girl's loveliness before, the Monitor could not doubt, and that very realization increased her anger until she could no longer breathe.
She began violently to tremble, her gaze passing from the girl's lustrous dark eyes and full red lips to her white shoulders and firm young breasts and then downward to the thin gauze garment that did not at all succeed in concealing what seemed the worst affront of all—thighs that seemed fashioned for the caresses of a lover's hands and a darkness in a shadowed hollow that only such a lover, whispering softly in the night, would have felt the slightest impulse to explore, with degradation stamping him for what he was, a passion-aroused beast.