Mary-Jean perked up. There still was no beauty cream or hand-balm or one ounce of imported Parisian perfume. And there was, she had to admit, an intriguing question. Ordinarily, she found herself thinking, a girl would need days and days to decide on an answer to a question like that. But this wasn't ordinarily. This question had come on the heels of Mary-Jean's monthly reading of _Woman's Home Journal_. And what, Mary-Jean thought, did the young woman who had gone to Caracas, Venezuela, and the one who had been an Army nurse in divided Berlin, and the one who had spent a summer with the potentate's son in Shalimar, Kashmir--what did they all have in common? What was it they had which Mary-Jean so craved? They attracted. * * * * * Attracted, she thought. And she did not merely mean attracted men, although that was part of it. To be sure, she told herself dreamily, all but forgetting the little peddler for the moment, sex-appeal was a part of it, perhaps a considerable part. But it was by no means all. For Mary-Jean did not want to attract men for their sake alone. She was happily, if mundanely, married. Universal sex-appeal was, thus, an adjunct to what she wanted, but not the sum-total of it. Mary-Jean wanted to attract, all right. She wanted to attract like the Caracas girl or the Army nurse or the Shalimar girl, the girl of the Vale of a Thousand Delights. She said, "You--you won't think I'm silly?" "My dear lady! I consider no requests silly, I assure you." "Well, I--I find it difficult to put into words." "Try, dear lady. I have sold happiness to a thousand women like you over a thousand years." "You _what_? What did you say?" The peddler looked as if she had insulted him. He said, his chirp of a voice getting shriller still: "Did you actually think that I restricted my sale of happiness to one block--or perhaps one postal zone number--here in your city, here on this particular day on this particular yearly calendar? My dear lady! My very dear foolish lady, please tell me what it is you wish." Mary-Jean blushed now that she had decided to go through with it, to bare her soul to this strange little peddler in a way that she had never bared it even to her own Tom, her husband, the sharer of and provider for her mundane existence. Still blushing, she said, "I want to--to attract adventure. I--I want to be like a magnet for--a magnet for the iron filings of adventure! I want romance and exciting things to--to embrace me." She clutched her throat wildly. The words had expressed her thoughts precisely, but they were not her own words. Or, more probably, they had come from her throat almost of their own volition. And the little peddler laughed and laughed.