“Well, then, whistle it!”

“It has to be felt.”

“Peel me,” he said, laying her arm to his bare bicep.  “Some little gladiator, eh?  Knock the stuffings out of any guy that tried to take you away from me.”

She turned her head on its flare of drying hair away from him.  The beach was all but quiet and the haze of the end of day in the air, almost in her eyes, too.

“Oh, Getaway!” she said, on a sigh, and again, “Getaway!”

His reserve with her, at which he himself was the first to marvel, went down a little then and he seized her bare arm, kissing it, almost sinking his teeth.  The curve of her chin down into her throat, as she turned her head, had maddened him.

“Quit,” she said.

“Never you mind.  You’ll wear diamonds,” he said, in his sole phraseology of promise.  “Will you get sore if I ask you something, Fairylin?”

“What?”

“Want one now?”

“Want what?”

“A diamond.”

“No,” she said.  “When I’m out here I quit wanting things like that.”

“Fine chance a fellow has to warm up to you!”

“Getaway!”

“What?”

“What did you do last night, after you walked home with me?”

“When?”

“You know when.”

“Why, bless your heart, I went home, Fairylin!”

“Please, Getaway—­”

“Home, Fairy.”

“You were up in Monkey’s room last night about eleven.  Now think, Getaway!”

“Aw now—­”

“You were.”

“Aw now—­”

“Nobody can fool me on your step.  You tiptoed for all you were worth, but I knew it!  The-ball-of your-foot—­squeak!  The-ball-of-your foot—­squeak!”

“Sure enough, now you mention it, maybe for a minute around eleven, but only for a minute—­”

“Please, Getaway, don’t lie.  It was for nearly all night.  Comings and goings on my ceiling until I couldn’t sleep, not because they were so noisy, but because they were so soft.  Like ugly whispers.  Is Monkey the friend you got the deal on with, Getaway?”

“We just sat up there talking old times—­”

“And Muggs, about eleven o’clock, sneaking up through the halls, dressed like the messenger boy again.  I saw him when I peeked out of the door to see who it was tiptoeing.  Getaway, for God’s sake—­”

He closed over her wrist then, his face extremely pointed.  It was a bony face, so narrow that the eyes and the cheek bones had to be pitched close, and his black hair, usually so shiny, was down in a bang now, because it was damp, and to Marylin there was something sinister in that dip of bang which frightened her.

“What you don’t know don’t hurt you.  You hear that?  Didn’t I tell you that after a few days this business deal—­business, get that?—­will be over.  Then I’m going to hold down any old job your heart desires.  But first I’m going to have money in my pockets!  That’s the only way to make this old world sit up and take notice.  Spondulicks!  Then I’m going to carry you off and get spliced.  See?  Real money.  Diamonds.  If you weren’t so touchy, maybe you’d have diamonds sooner than you think.  Want one now?”