Let the reader and Marilyns personal admirers, especially, take the author of this memoir was her psychiatrist friend, not one of the several psychiatrists who treated her during her periods of indecision to such eventual advantage for themselves and for their all-consuming calling. When she took to a couch in my house it was not to prostrate herself for verbal incisions to be made into her distressed mind, or to answer questions medically composed and aimed.

The truth is, Marilyn and I dated ten days in succession before she learned by the accident of a word carelessly dropped by me, that I was a doctor. She had met me quite casually, with no one responsible for introductions, and, as I learned in the course of our very first conversations, she was still in that stage in which she was afraid of doctors, and of psychiatrists especially.

This is how our curious non-doctor-non-patient relationship began. She was telling me about one of Hollywood's shadier movie tycoons with whom she had had a typical run-in. He had met her on a set in which she had a bit-part, and with a poverty of preliminaries offered to discuss an employment contract with her provided the discussion were conducted during a cruise in his yacht arranged for a party of two."So you acted like a good little girl and told him off," I suggested.

"I told him off," she corrected me,"but not under the banner of goodness. Just acting as a good business woman. No one doubts this Greek gorilla has money enough for both a woman for his bed and a new attraction for his next pole of garbage. But is he likely to confuse his blind-lust with his good business judgment and risk the possible loss of heavy gold on the outcome? I told himI'd discuss a business arrangement with him in his office, and that that would have to come before anything else."

So there'll be no yachting party for two?"

"And no contract,either."

"Good girl," I said by way of applause. "But I should warn you to consider more carefully in the future how you reveal such intimacies before someone you know as little about as you know about me."

"What are you, a spy in the pay of Sam Goldwyn?" she asked.

"I'm only thinking of that nasty occupation of mine, I said. "I happened to make a living out of what people tell me about themselves. I'm a psychiatrist."

She swept out of the bed, taking the bed-sheet with her, and sank into an easy chair two or three feet away.

I knew that there were people who disliked psychiatrists. It would never occurred to me that it could rise to such a stature of distrust.

It was a few minutes before she trusted herself to speak to me again. When she did, her eyes still revolved suspicion like green and blue harbor lights over San Francisco Bay on a dark night.

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" she asked.

Not everyone who introduces himself to a strange woman as a doctor is really a doctor, I explained to her. I learned that the first time in a dance-hall where I gave the hostess my name, beginning it with the dr."And I'm Cleopatra." she said with a broad skeptical smile. "Think we all fall for such a gag"" She then went on to explain that there were men who represented themselves to the girls as doctors in order to buy their favors for less money, a doctor being a commodity a dance hall girl is often in need of.

"When I learned how little you like people of my profession I decided never to disclose my business to you unless I had to. But I didn't really have to do it this time, did I?" I concluded.

She smiled again, a thin wavering smile, not the full Marilyn smile I was used to.

"Let's dress and go around the corner for coffee." she suggested.

We dressed in silence and I knew by the strain of it that the chill which had entered our relationship was still with her, and , if not treated as it should be, could bring our association to a quick end.

A way our of our misunderstanding occurred to me as we were being served our third cup of coffee.

"What you should try to keep in mind, Marilyn, is that I am a man first and a doctor only when I'm called to give professional treatment. Do I really have to be a doctor to you who have already known so many of them?"

She still liked a little crises. But I could see that my question had pleased her with the thought that I valued her highly enough to try so hard to keep our friendship going.

This dividing yourself into man and doctor I don't think I quite get it," she said hesitantly.

" It's simple enough, darling," I hastened to explain. "Let me tell you first of all that I'm not one of those fanatics who are dedicated to their professions. I'm a doctor not by my choice but my father's. My father wanted a doctor in the family, and I'm it.I'm not a good enough doctor to care for cattle, let alien people. I don't care how many people I accept out of the world as patients. You are one of the precious few to whom I am undertaking not to be a doctor, I would like us to go on just as we are now."

She shook her glistening curls.

"But you are a doctor," she reminded me dolefully.

"You're being logical, and that's the surest way of seeing things not as they are but in reverse, I said accusingly. "Why not look at the facts. We've known each other almost two weeks, haven't we?"

She nodded.

"Until like a donkey-though that simple creature would have acted more wisely-I let you know what I do to earn the money with which to pay rent and food bills, did anything of a troublesome nature occur between us?"

"Everything's been just fine." she admitted

"There you have it, darling!" I exclaimed."I was just a man to you. Can you think of any reason why we can't go on like that forever?"

"Aren't you always going to be tempted to give me advice, especially when I hit some high spot of trouble?" she asked.

"Believe me, darling, it's going to be a blessing knowing someone I don't have to advise," I answered,

Her face broke into that wonderfully full smile of hers. As she directed it entirely towards me I couldn't believe that she had ever seriously considered breaking with me.

"I'm willing to try," she said, sighing happily, and reaching out her lovely arms to me across the table.

"What I'll never understand," she added thoughtfully is why the first man I ever really wanted for my own turned out to be of all things-a doctor."