He embraced her.  “It did.  And I hope it will help you, too.”

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Tina stripped, and folded her clothes into the nearby chair.  She stepped gingerly into the steamy water, inhaling the wonderful and soothing bouquet of the air surrounding the tub, and slowly lowered herself, until the bubbles had covered her up to her chin.

She laid back against the tub, shut her eyes, and rested both arms on the side of the tub, legs stretched and parted.  She felt the knots on her shoulders and lower part of her neck begin to loosen.

She was reaching for the wash towel behind her, when she felt Bette’s hands press her lightly back down to resume her relaxed position.   She tensed.  She dared not open her eyes.

Bette worked some soap into a lather in the wash towel, bent next to the tub, and then began to soap Tina’s arms, gently massaging them after soaping Tina’s limbs with the towel.  She moved to the back of the tub, behind Tina, and pushed Tina gently off of the wall of the tub she was leaning against, to soap her neck, shoulders, and down her back.  She began to massage Tina from the nape of the back of her head with slow circular motions, and then, began to knead the knots on the base of the back of her neck, moving across to either side of the base to both the right and left, repeating the slow, circular motion.  She moved slowly down Tina’s back, along her spine, until she got to the area above her cheeks.

She removed her robe, and pressed Tina to relax against the wall of the tub again, then embraced the blonde lightly across her shoulders, around her neck.  Tina rested her head lightly against the side of Bette’s head, tears tracking down her cheeks.

“Two thousand five hundred years ago, there was a very wise man who sat down and wrote what remains one of the most beautiful passages about love ever written, “ Bette started.

“This man had a theory that Zeus one day decided to halve human beings into two, to subdue them, and keep the peace.  Well… since their natural form had been cut in two, each one soon began to long for its own other half, and they would throw their arms around each other, wanting to grow together…whenever one of the halves died, and one was left, the one that was left continued to seek the other, perhaps not realizing its loss.”