The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark Page A

three times a week for a year. After that, once a week." He was adjusting the tape-recorder, and his words were like air.
        "If you're trying to shock us, young man, we're un-shockable," said Greggie, with a delighted glance round the four walls which were not accustomed to this type of talk, for, after all, it was the public recreation room.
        "I'm shockable," said Joanna. She was studying Nicholas with an apologetic look.
        Collie did not know what attitude she should take up. Her fingers opened the clasp of her bag and snapped it shut again; then they played a silent tip-tap on its worn bulging leather sides. Then she said, "He isn't trying to shock us. He's very realistic. If one is growing in grace—I would go so far as to say when one _has__ grown in grace—one can take realism, sex and so forth in one's stride."
        Nicholas beamed lovingly at this.
        Collie gave a little half-cough, half-laugh, much encouraged in the success of her frankness. She felt modern and continued excitedly, "It's a question of what you never have you never miss, of course."
        Greggie put on a puzzled air, as if she genuinely did not know what Collie was talking about. After thirty years' hostile fellowship with Collie, of course she did quite well understand that Collie had a habit of skipping several stages in the logical sequence of her thoughts, and would utter apparently disconnected statements, especially when confused by an unfamiliar subject or the presence of a man.
        "Whatever do you mean?" said Greggie. "_What__ is a question of what you never have you never miss?"
        "Sex, of course," Collie said, her voice unusually loud with the effort of the topic. "We were discussing sex and getting married. I say, of course, there's a lot to be said for marriage, but if you never have it you never miss it."
        Joanna looked at the two excited women with meek compassion. To Nicholas she looked stronger than ever in her meekness, as she regarded Greggie and Collie at their rivalry to be uninhibited.
        "What do you mean, Collie?" Greggie said.
        "You're quite wrong there, Collie. One does miss sex. The body has a life of its own. We do miss what we haven't had, you and I. Biologically. Ask Sigmund Freud. It is revealed in dreams. The absent touch of the warm limbs at night, the absent—"
        "Just a minute," said Nicholas, holding up his hand for silence, in the pretence that he was tuning in to his empty tape-machine. He could see that the two women would go to any lengths, now they had got started.
        "Open the door, please." From behind the door came the warden's voice and the rattle of the coffee tray. Before Nicholas could leap up to open it for her she had pushed into the room with some clever manoeuvring of hand and foot like a business-like parlourmaid.
        "The Beatific Vision does not appear to _me__ to be an adequate compensation for what we miss," Greggie said conclusively, getting in a private thrust at Collie's religiosity.
        While coffee was being served and the girls began to fill the room, Jane entered, fresh from her telephone conversation with Tilly, and, feeling somewhat absolved by it, she handed over to Nicholas her brain-work letter from Charles Morgan. While reading it, he was handed a cup of coffee. In the process of taking the cup he splashed some coffee on the letter.
        "Oh, you've ruined it!" Jane said. "I'll have to do it all over again."
        "It looks more authentic than ever," Nicholas said. "Naturally, if I've received a letter from Charles Morgan telling me I'm a genius, I am going to spend a lot of time reading it over and over, in the course of which the letter must begin to look a bit worn. Now, are you sure George will be impressed by Morgan's name?"
        "Very," said Jane.
        "Do you mean you're very sure or that George will be very impressed?"
        "I mean both."
        "It would put