WHEN I commented to Virginia Johnson last week on what a harmonious project this had turned out to be, she said, 'Well of course it's the subject that does it.' " The subject was human sexual behavior. And the project for BEHAVIOR Correspondent Ruth Mehrtens Galvin was interviewing Dr. William Howell Masters and his associate, Mrs. Virginia Johnson, the co-authors of Human Sexual Inadequacy, for this week's cover story.

Reporter Galvin's first meeting with the researchers involved dinner at the home of Mrs. Johnson --who long ago learned that restaurant eavesdroppers make dining-out interviews impossible. Galvin was not at all surprised to find her hostess entertaining in slacks. "After all, that's fashionable," she says, "but it was a bit startling to have Dr. Masters come in the door a few minutes later wearing orange terry-cloth jogging pants. He explained that they always dress this way on Sundays to make it seem as if they are not working--though most of the time they are." Indeed, each day for a week, Galvin arrived before 9 a.m. at the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation in St. Louis and worked well into the evening poring over her notes and transcribing her tape-recorded interviews. One of the remarkable things was how unremarkable it all was. In contrast to most interviews, there were no interruptions or crises. "The whole essence of the Masters and Johnson interviews, like the Masters and Johnson therapy, was that there were no interruptions, and no crucial stages," she reports. "In fact, when you are talking with them about sex, it seems impossible that the subject could ever be something people leer at, wink and giggle about. It is always very calm, very pleasant, but there are no side issues and no distractions."

The behavioral sciences have been Ruth Galvin's beat since 1969, when she returned to Boston after H years in our London bureau and asked to be allowed to do specialized rather than general reporting. "I was delighted when BEHAVIOR was suggested," she says, "but my friends and associates think it's hilarious. After all, BEHAVIOR means specializing in everything." Since then, she has covered many subjects, including man's animal nature, black antiSemitism, infant intelligence, achievement processes in business, homosexuality, autistic children and the influence of dreams on learning. In 1949, the late author John P. Marquand remarked that being interviewed by Ruth Galvin was better than being psychoanalyzed. This time Dr. Masters merely said, "You sure ask a lot of questions."

The Cover: Photomontage by Robert S. Crandall from a photograph by Arthur Shay. The sculpture, Wedding Rings, is by Bulgaria's Svetoslav Djalazov.

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