ve to!" Martie agreed.

"You know, the beauty about you, Martie, is that you're such a good
pal," Rodney said enthusiastically as he drove on. "I've always wanted
a pal. You and I like the same things; we're both a little different
from the common run, perhaps--I don't want to throw any flowers at us,
but that's true--and it's wonderful to me that living here in this hole
all your life you're so up-to-date--so darned intelligent!"

This was nectar to Martie's soul. But she had never been indulged so
recklessly in personalities before, and she did not quite know how to
meet them. She wanted to say the right thing, to respond absolutely to
his mood; a smile, half-deprecating, half-charmed, fluttered on her
lips when Rodney talked in this fashion, but even to herself her words
seemed ill-chosen and clumsy. A more experienced woman, with all of
Martie's love and longing surging in her heart, would have vouchsafed
him just that casual touch of hand on hand, that slight, apparently
involuntary swerve of shoulder against shoulder that would have brought
the boy's arms about her, his lips to hers.

It was her business in life to make him love her; the only business for
which her mother and father had ever predestined her. But she knew
nothing of it, except that no "nice" girl allowed a boy to put his arm
about her or kiss her unless they were engaged. She knew that girls got
into "trouble" by being careless on these matters, but what that
trouble was, or what led to it, she did not know. She and Sally
innocently believed that some mysterious cloud enveloped even the most
staid and upright girl at the touch of a man's arm, so that of
subsequent events she lost all consciousness. A girl might attract a
man by words and smiles to the point of wishing to marry her, but she
must never permit the slightest liberties, she must indeed assume, to
the very day of her marriage, that the desire for marriage lived in the
heart of the man alone.

Martie never dreamed that the youth and sex within her had as definite
a claim on her senses as hunger had in the hour before dinner time, or
sleep had when she nodded over her solitaire at night. But she drank in
enchantment with Rodney's voice, his laughter, his nearness, and the
night was too short for her dreams or the days for her happiness.

They left the Roman-nosed horse and the surrey at Beetman's livery
stable, a damp and odorous enclosure smelling of wet straw, and with
the rear quar