"To tell you the truth, I'm on vacation."

"That is nice," Jane-Marie murmured dreamily. "And flattering, too, because you selected me to share your vacation."

"Could it be anyone but you?" Simon said. "As if it could be anyone but you." Which was perfectly, beautifully, delightfully true--for three weeks. "You married rather young, I see."

Jane-Marie stroked his temples with long fingers. "Oh, now, don't be so sure," she smiled. "Maybe I'm older than I look."

"No. You're about twenty. I guess you like marriage."

"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 

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