TEMPTED? OF COURSE HE IS TEMPTED—a flash of thigh through the sheer linen, her tongue slowly curling over her full lips, the beautiful long-lashed eyes meeting his and lingering, until he has to turn away. Or afternoons in the shadowed corridors, with no one nearby, a half-whispered Fuck me oh please fuck me. But never does he succumb, even as he waits for sleep, when her lithe image glides through his mind, stopping at the threshold of desire, wide-open-lipped, moist with longing. It isn’t a matter of right and wrong, but of his own heart’s wholeness, the truth he is in love with. Nor can he take on the role of hero, the splendid pattern of chastity, God’s good boy, and allow himself the indulgence of not imagining her distress. He imagines it every day. But until a clear response is forced upon him, his duty is to keep walking the ever-narrower path between yes and no, the tightrope where one false step means (apparent) disaster.