The Countess Krak whispered, "That orgy was your own craven appetite, you false tart!"

Miss Simmons brought the stick down on the stump with a thud. "I went to the police. They told me I could only act if I had the evidence." She leaned forward confidentially, "I obtained it with another's help. And I am sitting on it, ready to take an awful vengeance. It is in a secret place, ready to be mailed if there is any effort to do away with me."

She stepped back proudly. "Oh, I have friends! You should understand that, Wister. You should know that, students. And they will support me in this amongst the highest university faculties."

Miss Simmons leaned forward impressively again. "You may or may not know that my father holds the chair of psychology at Brooklyn University. Ever since I was a child he has warned me of designing males." She looked at Heller sitting separately upon his rock. Then she looked back at the class. "My father taught me every night at bedtime that men were no good and only wanted vile gratification of their base desires."

Miss Simmons looked at Heller. Then back at the twenty-nine other young men and women of her class. They were gazing at her intently, utterly absorbed.

Miss Simmons plunged on. "So when I got that invaluable letter, I realized at once that when it said I had been subjected to hypnotism, it was TRUE!"

She rapped again with her club. "When I had been told by the police I needed evidence, I went directly home. I told my mother and she looked very sad. We went to see my father. He was downcast, for it is an awful thing!"

Miss Simmons stood up straight. "My mother, God bless her, forced him to tell me!"

She leaned forward and spoke in a hissing voice. "My father, that vile fiend, had hypnotized me as a child. Not just once but repeatedly!"

Her face contorted in disgust. "He confessed that he had told me again and again under trance that I was FRIGID! He told me that if I had a man or experienced an orgasm I would go BLIND!"

She banged the stick upon the stump. "He is a craven traitor to psychology! It is supposed to (bleep) everybody, not make them frigid! And I am the living proof that he was mistaken. Look at my eyes! No glasses! Standing here, I can see every pimple on your dear faces!"

Miss Simmons stood back triumphantly. And then she stood in a humbled pose. "But who do I have to thank for this?" She turned to Wister and went over to him and knelt before him. "Oh, Wister, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am eternally grateful to you for letting me be raped. The orgasms were GLORIOUS! Time after time and right here on this very hallowed spot. I never dreamed such joy and ecstasy could exist. And TIME after TIME!"

She tenderly took Heller's hand. The Countess Krak flinched.

"Oh, dear Wister," said Miss Simmons. "I know I am not good enough for you. But my gratitude knows no bounds. You have been such an excellent student that I now declare you fully passed for the whole course. I will mark you A+ in Nature Appreciation for you appreciated nature even far better than I."

Simmons, kneeling, pressed his hand to her lips. She gazed upward into his eyes. "So, dear Wister, you are excused from all further classes, and even though it breaks my heart, you must leave this very minute. My gratitude walks with you forever for letting me be raped. So good-bye, my dearest, beautiful man. Good-bye."

Heller stood up, looking a little dazed. Then he waved a hand to the rest of the class and walked on up the hill.

Miss Simmons was a bit overcome. She knelt there for a little. Tears were dripping from her eyes. Then she rose and went back to the stump. She stood there, mastering her grief before she talked again.

Heller reached the top of the path. A very alert man of action, he instantly saw a flick of motion behind a tree. Alertly, he stepped over to it.

THE COUNTESS KRAK!

"What are you doing here?" said Heller.

"Just visiting the classroom to see how the pupils were getting on," said the Countess Krak.

"I'm excused from these classes for the rest of the year," said Heller. "And even after the UN loss. People knew I was pushing that. I don't understand it. I think she must have scrambled her main drives." He was looking back down the trail at the group in the vale. "Maybe I better go back and see if she's all right."

The Countess Krak bristled. She said, "Come along, Jettero."

"No," he said, "she sort of looked wild in the eye." He stepped back down the hill a few feet and stopped behind a tree, watching.

Miss Simmons had regained her aplomb. Standing behind the stump, she spoke to the attentive students in clear and educated tones. "So, class, you will be very glad to know that I am no longer under the influence of that traitor to psychology, my father. He was mistaken. I can do what I please with my life.

"I am at last free to teach you what I subconsciously wanted to teach you in Nature Appreciation. Now, Nature Appreciation is really about the birds and bees. So there will be a substantive change in course material.

"We will not use the texts of Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis and Freud, for they are crummy fellows to run around with. Such sources are bad, because they do not have any love in them. Instead, the text we will now use for this class is a classic Persian book, The Seventy and Seven Variations in the Act of Love by Hammer Hammer, translated by the respectable Chinese scholar Kum Chu Longdong, with beautiful illustrations and diagrams by Phullup Cummings. I was able to get these at the college bookstore last night."

She flipped open the sack on the stump and began to pass them around. The students took them with great interest. "Now, girls, open your books to Chapter One, 'The Essentials of Orgasm.' But the boys should open theirs to Chapter Thirteen, 'Variations of Gang Rape.' "

The Countess Krak, able to see those pages with her sunglasses, muttered, "Now I know for sure why he was so tired Sunday nights. The slut! Jettero," she said in a louder voice, "I think we better be going."

He couldn't hear what Miss Simmons had been say­ing. He shook his head. "I think that it's material I didn't get on the course."

The Countess Krak drummed her fingernails against the tree she was behind but she said nothing.

Miss Simmons said, "Now, students, I know the text is in Chinese, but the diagrams are very explicit, so simply notice the details for now. You can go over it more thoroughly in your homework. The point I am now trying to make is that nothing serves to teach better than experience. So I am going to lie down on this nice grass behind me here and you, Roger, are going to take my coat off."

Roger, a gangling youth, bounded to her side.

Heller, looking down into the glade, shook his head.

Miss Simmons' coat went flying through the air.

Miss Simmons' voice was coming over the Countess Krak's speaker. The tones were heavy with emotion. "For classwork during the remainder of the term, each boy of the class must first handle me and then each female classmate."

Heller, who had no speaker, turned to Krak. "She's saying something about classwork. I'm afraid I'm not going to get the whole subject."

"I'll say you're not," said the Countess Krak in a deadly voice.

Roger's coat hit the ground.

Heller stared. He looked back at the Countess Krak. "Why are they stripping? That brook isn't deep enough to swim in."

"Jettero," called the Countess Krak. "It's getting late."

Heller was staring down into the vale. Some cries were coming from there. "What on Earth?" he muttered.

A stack of schoolbooks lying on a bank slid down. One fell open at the bottom. A splash of mud hit it, splat.

"The hussy!" gritted the Countess Krak. "No wonder his clothing was all muddy every Sunday when he came home!"