those ducks flyin' home? The first time I saw them I
thought it was a V-shaped bit of smoke running away from one of the
factories round Newark."

She had told Martin that. His laugh seemed still to be in the air.

"Are you married?" asked Joan suddenly.

"Not exactly, dearie," replied Tootles, without choosing her words. But
a look at the young, eager, sweet face bent towards her made her decide
to use camouflage. "What I mean is, no, I'm not. Men don't marry me
when it isn't absolutely necessary. I'm a small part chorus lady, if
you get my point."

Joan was not quite sure that she did. Her sophistication had not gone
farther up than Sixty-seventh Street or farther down than Sherry's, and
it was bounded by Park Avenue on the one side and Fifth Avenue on the
other. "But would you like to have been married?" All her thoughts just
then were about marriage and Marty.

Tootles shook her head and gave a downward gesture with an open hand
that hardly needed to be amplified. "No, not up to a few weeks ago.
I've lived by the stage, you see, and that means that the men I've come
across have not been men but theatricals. Very different. You may take
my word. When I met my first man I didn't believe it. I thought he was
the same kind of fake. But when I knew that he was a man
alright,--well, I wanted to be married as much as a battered fishing
smack wants to get into harbor." She was thinking of Marty too,
although not of marriage any more.

"And are you going to be?"

"No, dearie. He's got a wife, it turns out. It was a bit o' cheek ever
to dream of hitting a streak of such luck as that. All the same, I've
won something that I shall treasure all the days of my life.... Look.
Here come some of the mourners." She pointed to three crows that
flapped across a sky all hung with red and gold.

Joan was puzzled. "Mourners?"

"Why, yes. Isn't this the death bed of a day?"

"I never thought of it in that way," said Joan.

"No," said Tootles, running her eyes again over Joan's well-groomed
young body. "That's easy to see. You will, though, if ever you want
every day to last a year. You're married, anyway."

"Not exactly," said Joan, unconsciously repeating the other girl's
expression.

Tootles looked at Martin's ring. "What about that, then?"

Joan looked at it too, with a curious gravity. It stood for so much
more than she had ever supposed that it would. "But I don't know
whether it's going to bind us, or not."

"And