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.

The shower had stopped. He could hear Jane-Marie humming to herself in a nervous falsetto. He didn't know whether to get under the covers or not, and finally decided Jane-Marie would be more at ease if he did. He had already combed his hair and brushed his teeth.

At last, she came. She was lovely, his wife, in a daring black negligee. She stood there in it for a long, wonderful moment, then plunged the room into darkness.

You could be a newlywed over and over again, Simon thought happily. You could taste the joys of brand new parenthood not once but a hundred times. You could see the kids off to school on that memorable first day as often as you liked, see your 

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