“I don’t grok its fullness,” admitted Jubal. “It concerns a subject that has been of little direct interest to me in quite a while.”

“One institution won’t be damaged by it. Marriage.”

“So?”

“Very much so. Instead it will be purged, strengthened, and made endurable. Endurable? Ecstatic! See that wench down there with the long black hair?”

“Yes. I was delighting in its beauty earlier.”

“She knows it’s beautiful and it’s grown a foot and a half longer since we joined the church. That’s my wife. Not much over a year ago we lived together about like bad-tempered dogs. She was jealous . . . and I was inattentive. Bored. Hell, we were both bored and only our kids kept us together—that and her possessiveness; I knew she would never let me go without a fight and a scandal . . . and I didn’t have any stomach for trying to put together a new marriage at my age, anyhow. So I got a little on the side, when I could get away with it—a college professor has many temptations, few safe opportunities—and Ruth was quietly bitter. Or sometimes not so quiet. And then we joined up.” Sam grinned happily. “And I fell in love with my own wife. Number-one gal friend!”

Sam’s words had been very quiet, an intimate conversation walled by noise of eating and cheerful company. His wife was far down the table. She looked up and said clearly, “That’s an exaggeration, Jubal. I think I’m about number six.”

Her husband called out, “Stay out of my mind, beautiful!—we’re talking men talk. Give Larry your undivided attention.” He picked up a hard roll, threw it at her.

She stopped it in mid-trajectory, threw it back at him while continuing to talk; Sam caught it and buttered it. “I’m giving Larry all the attention he wants . . . until later, maybe. Jubal, that brute didn’t let me finish. Number-six place is wonderful! Because my name wasn’t even on the list till we joined the church. I hadn’t rated as high as six with Sam in the past twenty years.” She did then turn her attention back to Larry.

“The real point,” Sam said quietly, “is that we two are now partners, much more than we ever were even at the best period in our outside marriage—and we got that way through the training, culminating in sharing and growing closer with others who had the same training. We all wind up in twosome partnerships inside the larger group—usually, but not necessarily, with our own spouses-of-record. Sometimes not . . . and if not, the readjustment takes place with no heartache and a warmer, closer, better relationship between the soidisant ‘divorced’ couple than ever, both in bed and out. No loss and all gain. Shucks, this pairing as partners needn’t even be between man and woman. Dawn and Jill for example—they work together like an acrobatic team.”

“Hmm . . . I suppose,” Jubal said thoughtfully, “that I had thought of those two as being Mike’s wives.”

“No more so than they are to any of us. Or than Mike is to all the rest. Mike is too busy, has been, I should say, until the Temple burned—to do more than make sure that he shared himself all the way around.” Sam added. “If anybody is Mike’s wife, it’s Patty, although she keeps so busy herself that the relation is more spiritual than physical. Actually, you could say that both Mike and Patty are shortchanged when it comes to mauling the mattress.”

Patty was not quite as far away as Ruth, but far enough. She looked up and said, “Sam dear. I don’t feel short-changed.”

“Huh?” Sam then announced, loudly and bitterly, “The only thing wrong with this church is that a man has absolutely no privacy!”

This brought a barrage of food in his direction, all from distaff members. He handled it all and tossed it back without lifting a hand . . . until the complexity of it apparently got to be too much and a plateful of spaghetti caught him full in the face—thrown, Jubal noticed, by Dorcas.

For a moment Sam looked like a particularly ghastly crash victim. Then suddenly his face was clean and even the sauce that had spattered on Jubal’s shirt was gone. “Don’t give her any more. Tony. She wasted it; let her go hungry.”

“Plenty more in the kitchen,” Tony answered. “Sam, you look good in spaghetti. Pretty good sauce, huh?” Dorcas’s plate sailed out to the kitchen, returned, loaded. Jubal decided that Dorcas had not been concealing talents from him—the plate was much more heavily filled than she would have chosen herself; he knew her appetite.

“Very good sauce,” agreed Sam. “I salvaged some that hit me in the mouth. What is it? Or shouldn’t I ask?”