ped, twisted, frustrated kind of a
man-hater you always thought you were.

"I gotta go now. You think it over. But not too long. Those two guys are
going to be mighty, mighty hurt if they find out you're conscious and
won't see them."

She went out the door, pushing her cart in front of her.

* * * * *

Miss Kitty relaxed her neck, willed the tenseness out of her body, and
just lay for a while thinking of nothing. A gust, a rattle of raindrops,
called her attention to the window. They had put her on the ground
floor. She was able to see through the window to the street outside. The
rain was pelting down, like that first rain they'd had there on New
Earth. How chagrined the boys had looked when the roof started leaking
in a dozen places!

She felt a warm sense of relief, of gratitude, that she could remember
them without shame. The nurse had been right, of course. Probably the
doctors had planted that particular nurse in her room, anticipating her
return to consciousness, anticipating the necessity for a little mental
therapy.

_Good female sense._ With such a semantic difference from good male
sense! The mind of a man and a woman was not the same. She knew that
now. And she realized that deeply, hidden from her own admittance, she
had always known it. And the nurse's good earthy
expression--"propositioning those two guys"--approval that it had been
natural and right. And another expression, "the way you pitched in
there, carried your share of things."

Carried your share of things! That meant more than just cooking,
mending, cleaning. More than just seeing that the race continued, too;
although it somehow tied in with all these things.

She lay in her bed, watching the rain through the window, getting
comfort from the soft, drumming sound. Along the street she could see
people sloshing through the film of water underfoot. She watched the
scene of turned-up collars, pulled-down hatbrims, bobbing umbrellas, as
if it were something apart from her, and yet a part of her. She began to
get a sense of rare vision, an understanding which she knew was more
complete than any intellectual abstraction she had ever managed. She
began to get a woman's sense of purpose, completely distinct from that
of a man.

* * * * *

She recalled once reading of an incident where an Oklahoma oil
millionaire had built a huge mansion; then, because his squaw did not
know how