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By Root 927 0

a half. But Mr. Beragon didn't pay much attention to the law. The blue car climbed into the seventies and stayed there, and when they pulled up at the gate of the settlement it was only a little after two. They didn't enter it, however. They took the little road to the right, and in a moment were stealing through great mountain pines that ladened the air with their smell. Presently they nosed down a rough dirt track, twisted through bushes that whacked the windshield, and pulled up with a jerk behind a little shingled shack. Mr. Beragon set his brake, started to get out, and then said, as though he had just thought of it: "Or would you prefer a bathhouse, around on the other side? I keep this shack here, but—"

"I think this is fine."

He took her bag, and they went clumping around a boardwalk to the front. He unlocked the door, and they stepped into the hottest, stuffiest room that Mildred had ever been in.

"Wooh!"

He strode around, throwing up windows, going out back and opening doors, letting air circulate in a place that evidently hadn't been opened for a month. While he was doing this she looked around. It was the living room of a rough mountain shack, with a rough board floor through whose chinks she could see the red earth beneath. Two or three Mexican rugs were scattered around, and the furniture was oak, with leather seats. However, there was a stone fireplace, and a horsy, masculine look to everything, so she half liked it. He reappeared presently, and said: "Well, are you hungry? We can get lunch at the tavern, or would you rather swim first?"

"Hungry? You just had breakfast!"

"Then we'll swim."

He picked up her bag and led the way to a small back room whose only furnishings were a cotton rug, a chair, and an iron bed, made up neatly with blankets. "If you can manage here, I'll use the front room, and—see you in a few minutes."

"I won't be long."

Both of them spoke with elaborate casualness, but she was no sooner alone than she pitched the bag on the bed and zipped it open even more quickly than she had zipped it shut. She was terrified he would reappear before she had finished dressing. Yet the possible consequences, as such, weren't what frightened her. The heat, and now the piny breeze that was blowing in, filled her with a heavy, languorous, South Seas feeling that wanted to dawdle, to play, to get caught half dressed, without any shame whatever. But as he left her, she had caught a whiff of her hair, and it reeked of Archie's bacon grease. It often did, she knew, specially when she was a day or so late at the beauty shop but as to whether Wally noticed this, or liked it, or didn'l like it, she cared no more than she cared whether he dropped by or didn't drop by. But that this man should notice it was a possibility that made her squirm. She had an obsession to get overboard, to get washed, before he came near her.

She slipped feverishly out of her clothes, put them on a chair, slipped on the suit. This was before the day of sarongs, and it was a simple maroon affair that made her look small, soft, and absurdly childish. She put on the rubber slippers, picked up the soap. Near her was a door that seemed to lead to some sort of small corridor. She opened it and peeped. Out back was a lattice, and beyond that the walk that circled the house. She pattered out and around, then ran straight down to the little jetty, with its small float. Clutching the soap in her hand, she dived off. The water was so cold she flinched, but she swam down until she was within a few inches of the stones she could see on bottom. Now safely out of sight, she ground the soap into her hair, swimming down with her free hand, holding her breath until her heart began to pound.

When she came up he was standing there, on the float, so she let the soap flutter to the bottom. "You were certainly in one hell of a hurry."

"I was hot."

"You forgot your cap."

"I—? I must be a sight."

"You look like a drowned rat."

"If you could only see what you look like!"

At this pert remark he dived in, and there ensued an immemorial