They usually were taken for brother and sister. Both had dark, luminous eyes in an oval visage. Both had pale, translucent skin that belied their brown hair, as if genes from unsuspected latitudes had leapt to expression in their facial highlights. Although neither tall nor thin, each moved with easy, athletic grace. She was a girl of twenty, he a decade older. Her emotions were tied to a lad in a faraway land while his had closer links, if more chaotic; and the pleasures that joined them were fraternal, entwined with shared confidence and mutual cheer in the other's company.  

        She knocked on his door early on a sunny afternoon, to draw him out from a bath with just a towel wrapped around. She teased him boldly, ventured beyond caution's borders. He stripped away her garments in turn. They made love on a high bed in the sunshine, and forgot the water running. The doorbell jarred them from a half-slumber. The bath had overflowed. That must be the downstairs neighbour sounding the alarm. He sprang to shut the tap, ran to apologise at the door. She hid in the bedclothes.

        The bell-ringer turned out not to be the neighbour. He opened to a smiling young woman who had come to visit a few days before, brought along by a mutual friend.

        "Passing by, thought to stop and see you," she offered with an expression matching the sultry day. Then she hesitated at his disarray. Her casual approach suddenly looked unassured. He stammered hello, stuttered a bit about how this might not be a good moment, and managed to annoy her. "Well, at least may I leave a note for our friend?" She grew insistent at his ridiculous hanging about by the door. "Let me in to write the note," she prodded. Shoulders hunched in a shrug, he stepped aside for her to sweep in, followed her to the kitchen, and produced a pencil. She looked about, sniffed twice, and wrinkled her nose. "You can smell it," she stated. He waved the pencil.

        Once the note had been written, and the unannounced visitor ushered out, he went to find his intimate sister. She had taken refuge in the bathtub, where she trembled still. The two padded back to the bedroom to make it a camp for the rest of the day. They were to remain lovers, in intermittence, for years.

        Long after they had gone on to separate lives in different countries, she told him that that afternoon had been her first spent in knowledge of a man. Her eyes crinkled in the telling, mixing for an instant a sly smile and a tiny tear.