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"We get a room in the Green House," Marthe said.

Latouche sprang to her feet and threw Marthe to the floor. She kicked the pregnant girl and jumped upon her, slapping her face. Then, in great fury, she dashed to her bedroom and returned with her revolver. I dived at her and caught her by the wrist. I wrenched the revolver from her.

She panted heavily for a moment and then said, "We go now, Bus." I followed her to the jeep Colonel Haricot had loaned her. She climbed in. We drove to the Green House. Eight or ten cars stood outside.

Latouche left the jeep and strode up to the door. Inside we could hear the cheap piano and sounds of dancing. Latouche pushed the door wide open. The girls inside gasped as they saw her flashing beauty. "It's Madame Barzan!" they whispered, and drew back along the wall.

Latouche surveyed the garish room. Then, seeing the madame in a plush chair, she walked up, grabbed the plump middle-aged woman by the shoulders and dragged her to her feet.

"Damned fool!" Latouche hissed. She slapped the woman's face eight or ten times and gave her a brutal shove in the stomach. The whimpering madame fell backward into the chair. Latouche scowled over her. "Good thing the officer take away my gun. I kill you for sure! My sister in here!" She turned slowly and studied the room and its occupants. "We go!" she said.

Back at the plantation Latouche sought Marthe and told her she was sorry. She placed her arm about the lovely little girl and began to cry a little. "Is no good," she mumbled. "All this love-making with soldiers. Somebody gonna get hurt. This time maybe it's you! How long you gone, Marthe?"

"Three month," the fifteen-year-old girl replied.

"Oh, mon Dieu!" Latouche sighed. "Well, what we can do, Tony? What you think? We make her get married?"

"We usually do in America," Tony replied. "We call it compounding the error."

From the snorts and puffings outside we judged that Colonel Haricot had arrived with the offending sergeant, whom he was giving some sound abuse. He entered the salon in the grand manner, bowed low to Latouche, and tenderly approached Marthe as if that poor child were already encouched.

"Well!" he shouted at the embarrassed sergeant. "What are you going to do about it?"

"I want to marry her," the sergeant said, stepping beside his pale sweetheart.

"It's about time!" the colonel snorted. Then he magnanimously grasped the sergeant's hand, adding in a voice of great emotion, "It's good to see a decent fellow play the man." The sergeant was bewildered. He had wanted to marry Marthe from the first day he had seen her.

At this moment Laurencin entered the salon. The colonel looked at her briefly and dropped his head, blushing furiously. "We are going to be married, too," be said.

"Oh, Colonel Haricot!" Latouche cried, as if she alone in the salon were surprised at this astonishing news. As senior naval officer present I was very crisp, very proper. I extended the congratulations of my service.

"I don't know what they'll say in Terre Haute!" Haricot chuckled. "But to the devil with them, whatever they say. You know, gentlemen, I've had more fun in this house... More honest-to-John fun..."

"That's true of a lot of us, colonel," Fry said.

"It's awful to think of leaving this plantation," Haricot confided.

"Moving north?"

"Yep," he replied. "I wrote to my Mother about Laurencin. Her being half Javanese, you know. Mom was very broadminded. Been giving money to missions all her life. A Baptist, Mom is. She said if she'd given all that money to save souls, she guessed some of them must be saved by now!" He nudged me and grinned broadly. "Get it?" he asked.

But the colonel put his foot down when a double wedding was suggested. "After all," he observed righteously, "there is a difference. A considerable difference." What it was that constituted the difference, his rank as compared with the sergeant's or Laurencin's virginity as compared with Marthe's family status, I