"What—would I have done?"
"You would have ceased to be a lover. You would have become ruthlessly scientific and clinical. You would have stretched me out on the bed and removed all of my clothes. You would have examined me from head to foot, not sparing even the pores of my skin. Without a magnifying glass you would be handicapped, not quite as well equipped as one of those thorough little men whose task it is to peer at beetles under glass or butterflies pinned to a board, or a human body stretched out naked and helpless on a mortuary slab. But you would have seen enough to disillusion you. No woman can be peered at quite that relentlessly. Even a body like mine is not perfect. There are a few flaws."
Loring drew in his breath sharply. She had drawn away from him and was sitting on the edge of the bed, a faint, enigmatic smile on her lips. Then the smile vanished and her eyes clouded over.
"I am sorry. It is all very serious—and I am deeply troubled. I did not intend to speak with bitterness or levity. But sometimes levity helps when you are inwardly greatly disturbed."
"Good God, if I really believed—" Loring's mouth had gone dry and he had difficulty in getting the words out. "You don't actually expect me to believe—"
"How much proof do you need? If I hadn't the ability to anticipate some of your thoughts would you know as much as you do about me? Telepathy at that level of complexity would only be possible between a human and a not entirely human mind. Surely you must realize that. The faculty is more highly developed in me than it is in you, but it is strong enough in you to be stimulated artificially when our minds are in contact."
"Then you must have wanted me to know."
"Up to a point. Your erotic ardor might have been less intense if you had thought me completely human. There would have been less mystery to stir you and make you my slave."
"Your slave! You must be quite mad."
"Oh, no, I'm not. You may think the shoe was on the other foot, but it wasn't, not for a moment. You have a term for it. Love slave. Don't misunderstand me. That is not a reflection on your masculinity, on the relationship that exists between a man and a woman in biological sense. No truly feminine woman wants to dominate a man in a love relationship, and no really masculine man would stand for it. But I am not talking about the purely physical relationship. In an ultimate sense it is the woman who enslaves the man, by her beauty. If that beauty is great enough he becomes her slave night and day. He thinks of nothing else, desires nothing else."