"I love it. It's too early to tell, but--well, it agrees with me." "I'm glad." "Glad of what, darling?" "That you married early. Come here." She came and sat in his lap. He blew in her ears and at the short hairs on the nape of her neck until she laughed. "I love you," she said. "I love you so." He loved her too. It was right. She was the girl he had selected. But a sense of urgency swept over him, not only for the love they would consummate as the night grew longer, but for what he hoped to learn from her so he could have the name as well as the game--as well as that feeling of adventure which sharpened his senses so acutely. He said, "Do you ever think of the times before multiple marriage became the accepted social institution? Do you ever think of how those people must have felt?" "I knew you were an intellectual!" Jane-Marie cried instead of answering his question. "I just knew it. I could see it in your eyes, darling. Oh, I do love you." He kissed her tenderly, then with fire. He could feel the passion mounting between them, but tore himself from its grasp. "Don't you ever think of it?" he asked again. "Well, I read a book about it once, Murray's _The Decline of Monogamy_. They must have felt simply awful, darling. I mean, I love you, but to have to spend all that time, season after season, year after year, with the same person would--would drive you crazy. You'd get to know him so well, everything he did, the way he thought and all. Oh, with you it's different. I could spend forever with you three weeks, but--" "No, Honey. I mean the others. The outcasts. Those who carried on adulterous relationships." Jane-Marie frowned in thought. He could tell the conversation interested her but thought she would have preferred to drop it. Still, the conversation was flowing more smoothly than he had dared hope, and in the right direction. "I don't know," Jane-Marie finally admitted. "I suppose they were pioneers, sort of. I mean, flaunting social custom the way they did because they were willing to fight for a better way of life." "I agree with you," Simon said. "Sometimes convention restricts you and doesn't allow you to live the fullest life. You should then flaunt convention by all means, don't you think?" "I do. I do." He sighed gratefully. The seed had been planted. He now had to cultivate it for three weeks. A word here, a gesture there, a suggestion, twenty-one days of marital bliss, of gaining her confidence, of impressing her with everything he did. "Well," he said, "shall we go upstairs?" He watched the color rise from Jane-Marie's throat and soon suffuse her face. "I was thinking Mr. and Mrs. Busby might want to play some bridge--" "There are other nights," he said. He scattered the embers of the burning logs with the poker and went into the dining room after the bottle of champagne. With Jane-Marie at his side he climbed the stairs. * * * * *