Bertha came home from boarding school. Her parents lived on the second floor. Every time she went up the stairs after five o’clock, Max, the high school student, came down from the third floor. He had locks of hair like a poet and looked very manly.

At first, they had both blushed. He had greeted her.

The typical schoolboy, she thought, looking crossly at him.

But the next day, he was holding a small letter, which suddenly slipped into her hands. She liked that. There was something so secretive, so forbidden about it.

A love letter. God, that would have been nice!

Maybe even a poem: bust—lust, heart—falling apart!

Something stirred inside her to throw that thing away.—

She almost floated up the stairs. It was as though she had gained new, stronger muscles.

At the top, she rang the doorbell. The maid opened the door. Her Mama happened to come out as well.

“What’s the matter, you look so strange?”

“Me? Oh, nothing at all,” she said in a half-brash, half-dismissive tone. Finally, she was somebody, she thought to herself, since she had received a letter from a “gentleman.”

Her mother looked her in the eyes and brushed her hair back: “Don’t you have something to say to me, my child?”

Suddenly the little one lost her nerve: to lie to her Mommy! How could she! But then the rebellious spite of childhood came over her: “Why are they always after me, to torture me, to spy on me, as though I wanted to do something bad. Just as well! Have it your way, now I’ll really do it.”

“All right, my girl, you don’t know yet that even the thief finds exceptions and excuses for himself.”

She replied to her Mama: “I don’t know what you mean, it is nothing.”

Then she went to a special place, the only one where she was left alone, and read: “Glowing desire—impulses on fire, sunlight—delight.”

It was absolutely beautiful! She shivered with joyful excitement.

He asked for a rendezvous. Goodness! Where? Her parents never left her alone.