“There’s this to remember too,” she added; “a girl meets a man that has a wad of money, and can take her out in a big car, and buy her a good meal, and a lot of pretty clothes, and set her up in a bungalow, and he’s a mighty big man to her, it’s easy to think he’s something wonderful. It’s all right for moralists to sniff, that don’t know anything about it; but the plain truth is, the man that came with the cash and offered me my first real start in a picture—he was just about the same as a god to me, and it was only decent to give him what he wanted. I had to live with him a few months, before I knew he was a fat-headed fool.” There was a silence. “I suppose,” said Vee, “you’re wondering why I tell you this. I’m safe now, I’ve got some money in the bank, and I might set up for a lady—put on swank and forget the ugly past. If I’d told you I was an innocent virgin, how would you have known? But I said to myself, ‘By God, if having money means anything to me, it means I don’t have to lie any more.’” Said Bunny: “I know a man that says that. It made a great impression on me. I’d never known anybody like it before.” “Well, it makes you into a kind of savage. I’ve got an awful reputation in the picture world—has anybody told you?” “Not very much,” he answered. She looked at him sharply. “What have they told you? All about Robbie Warden, I suppose?” “Hardly all,” he smiled. “I heard you’d been in love with him, and that you’d sort of been in mourning ever since.” “I made a fool of myself twice over a man; Robbie was the last time, and believe me, it’s going to stay the last. He put up the money for the best picture I ever made, and he was handsome as a god, and he begged me to marry him, and I really meant to do it; but all the time he was fooling with two or three other women, and one of them shot him, so that was the end of my bright young dream. No, I’m not in mourning, I’m in rejoicing because I missed a lot of trouble. But if I’m a bit cynical about love, and a bit unrefined in my language, you can figure it out.” And Vee shook the mountain of sand off her bare legs and stood up. “Here’s how I keep off the fat,” she said, and put her hands down on the sand where it was wet and firm, and stood the rest of herself upon them, her slender white limbs going straight up, and her face, upside down, laughing at Bunny; in that position she walked by slow handsteps down to the water, and then threw herself over in the other half of a handspring, and lighted on her feet and dashed into the breakers. “Come on in! The water’s fine!” V