s him--with my teeth in his ear. That's how much I got
to be afraid of."

"Oh, Getaway, I'm so glad!"

"Well, then, lay off--"

"Getaway, you jumped then! Like somebody had hit you, and it was only a
kid popping a paper bag."

"You get on my nerves. You'd make a cat nervous, with your suspecting!
The more a fellow tries to do for a girl like you the less--Look here
now, you got to get the hell out of my business."

She did not reply, but lay to the accompaniment of his violent
nervousness and pinchings into the sand, with her face still away from
him, while the dusk deepened and the ocean quieted.

After a while: "Now, Marylin, don't be sore. I may be a rotten egg some
ways, but when it comes to you, I'm there."

"I'm not sore, Getaway," she said, with her voice still away from him.
"Only I--Let's not talk for a minute. It's so quiet out here--so full of
rest."

He sat, plainly troubled, leaning back on the palms of his hands and
dredging his toes into the sand. In the violet light the tender line of
her chin to her throat still teased him.

Down farther along the now deserted beach a youth in a bathing suit was
playing a harmonica, his knees hunched under his chin, his mouth and
hand sliding at cross purposes along the harp. That was the silhouette
of him against a clean sky, almost Panlike, as if his feet might be
cloven.

What he played, if it had any key at all, was rather in the mood of
Chopin's Nocturne in D flat major. A little sigh for the death of a day,
a sob for the beauty of that death, and a hope and ecstasy for the new
day yet unborn--all of that on a little throbbing mouth organ.

"Getaway," cried Marylin, and sat up, spilling sand, "that's it! That's
what I meant a while ago. Hear? It can't be talked. That's it on the
mouth organ!"

"It?"

"It! Yes, like I said. Somebody has to feel it inside of him, just like
I do, before he can understand. Can't you feel it? Please! Listen."

"Aw, that's an old jew's-harp. I'll buy you one. How's that?"

"All right, I guess," she said, starting off suddenly toward the
bathhouse.

He was relieved that she had thrown off the silence.

"Ain't mad any more, are you, Marylin?"

"No, Getaway--not mad."

"Mustn't get fussy that way with me, Marylin. It scares me off. I've had
something to show you all day, but you keep scaring me off."

"What is it?" she said, tiptoe.

His mouth drew up to an oblique. "You know."

"No, I don't."

"Maybe I'll te