Free Girls' Dormitory by Orrie Hitt Page A

was a love of beauty, a thing to treasure, a warm and gentle understanding that went deep, very deep. It was not like the love of a man, dirty and soiled. Woman's body was the castle of love and from woman's body came all that was good and decent in life. Their love, was fine and right, a love that had to be, a love that would not and could not be denied.
    And yet, it was wrong.
    People said it was wrong.
    And afterward, like now, when she was alone, even she felt that it was wrong.
    She reached for a cigarette, put it down, wished for the first time in her life that she had a drink. A drink might help. A drink might make things clearer. One of the girls on the third floor, a loose-hipped blonde, said you had to drink or you couldn't think. Maybe that was so. The blonde got good marks, had fun, and seemed to enjoy life. Perhaps, in moderation, that was the way.
    "Moderately," one of the instructors often said. "Everything must be taken in moderation. Sleep. Work. Play. To overdo anything is to destroy the fun of the doing."
    She found the cigarette again and this time she lit it. Her hands were trembling violently as she trembled inside. Moderately. The instructor didn't know what he was talking about. Love was the one thing that you didn't take moderately. Love was wild and wonderful and you took as much of love as you could get, grasping it to you as you held a precious gem, living only for the instant when love came to you, hot and burning, living only for that second when all other things were swept aside.
    Moderately.
    That was a joke.
    Love was not moderate. Love was all the way or it was nothing at all. Love was a meeting of the minds, as well as the meeting of bodies, and love was a glorious thing beyond all other things.
    Yes, she loved Helen.
    She imagined that Helen was a great deal as her mother had been—sweet, gentle, kind. There was none of the brutality of man surrounding Helen, no pain and fear to their love. There was just a violent storm of need and desire, a storm that filled her with wonder and awe, a storm that sprang up from the day or night and fell like some blessed rain on parched ground.
    Yes, she loved Helen.
    She loved her with all her heart and soul and body. She could never leave Helen, never part from her. She was in the net, caught up in it, and she could not escape. She had come to Cooper Community College to find herself and she had lost herself. She had lost herself in the greatest trap of all, the trap of needing something, wanting it, but not knowing exactly what. But it was not a man; that much she knew. It was not Frank Taylor or any of the other men she had met. It was not any of the things that she had ever known before. Rather it was this, this unbelievable ecstasy that filled her with joy—and fear.
    If they were ever caught—God, it would be terrible! They would be thrown out of the college, laughed at, their lives perhaps destroyed. Helen was right. They must be careful about how they acted. They should both date boys once in a while and act like the other girls acted. That way, there would be no suspicions or curious thoughts, no chance of being discovered. They would be safe and the world around them would not know.
    She wondered whom she would date. Jerry Dixon? He was big and strong and ruthless but there was something curiously attractive about him.
    "Men want one thing," Evelyn Carter had said more than once. "And the only thing different about Jerry is that he don't know when to stop."
    No, it wouldn't be Jerry. She could imagine how it would be with Jerry, his arms long and powerful, forcing her to bend to his will.
    No, not Jerry.
    Never a man like Jerry.
    She walked to the window and stood there smoking, looking out at the white snow piled high on the ground beneath. But perhaps a man like Jerry was the kind of a man she needed. If she went out with him, no one would ever suspect her. She smiled, thinking about what the girls might say about her. "Peggy is getting