"Maybe I'm not quite as green as you think I am!" she flared up
stormily. With this sharp flaring-up every single individual pulse in
her body seemed to jerk itself suddenly into conscious activity again
like the soft, plushy pound-pound-pound of a whole stocking-footed
regiment of pain descending single file upon her for her hysterical
undoing. "Maybe I've had a good deal more experience than you give me
credit for!" she hastened excitedly to explain. "I tell you--I tell you
I've been engaged!" she blurted forth with a bitter sort of triumph.

With a palpable flicker of interest Zillah Forsyth looked back across
her shoulder. "Engaged? How many times?" she asked quite bluntly.

As though the whole monogamous groundwork of civilization was threatened
by the question, Rae Malgregor's hands went clutching at her breast.
"Why, once!" she gasped. "Why, once!"

Convulsively Zillah Forsyth began to rock herself to and fro. "Oh
Lordy!" she chuckled. "Oh Lordy, Lordy! Why I've been engaged four times
just this past year!" In a sudden passion of fastidiousness she bent
down over the particular photograph in her hand and snatching at a
handkerchief began to rub diligently at a small smouch of dust in one
corner of the cardboard. Something in the effort of rubbing seemed to
jerk her small round chin into almost angular prominence. "And before
I'm through," she added, at least two notes below her usual alto tones,
"And before I'm through--I'm going to get engaged to--every profession
that there is on the surface of the globe!" Quite helplessly the thin
paper skin of the photograph peeled off in company with the smouch of
dust. "And when I marry," she ejaculated fiercely, "and when I
marry--I'm going to marry a man who will take me to every place that