se by the Temple, three Myrmidons keeping guard
over them. The rest of the crowd had dissolved into little bunches
spreading all over the park. Forrester knew he would have to leave, too,
and very soon. There were seven girls waiting for him down below.

Not that he minded the idea. Seven beautiful girls, after all, were
seven beautiful girls. But he did want to keep an eye on Gerda, and he
wasn't sure whether he would be able to do it when he got busy.

Somewhere in the bushes, someone began to play a kazoo, adding the final
touch of melancholy and heartbreak to the music. The formal and
official part of the Bacchanal was now over.

The _real_ fun, Forrester thought dismally, was about to begin.

CHAPTER NINE

"Now," Forrester said gaily, "let's see if your God has all the names
right, shall we?"

The seven girls seated around him in a half-circle on the grass giggled.
One of them simpered.

"Hmm," Forrester said. He pointed a finger. "Dorothy," he said. The
finger moved. "Judy. Uh--Bette. Millicent. Jayne." He winked at the last
two. They had been his closest companions on the march down. "Beverly,"
he said, "and Kathy. Right?"

The girls laughed, nodding their heads. "You can call me Millie,"
Millicent said.

"All right, Millie." For some reason this drew another big laugh.
Forrester didn't know why, but then, he didn't much care, either.
"That's fine," he said. "Just fine."

He gave all the girls a big, wide grin. It looked perfectly convincing
to them, he was sure, but there was one person it didn't convince:
Forrester. He knew just how far from a grin he felt.

As a matter of fact, he told himself, he was in something of a quandary.

He was not exactly inexperienced in the art of making love to beautiful
young women. After the last few months, he was about as experienced as
he could stand being. But his education had, it now appeared, missed one
vital little factor.

He was used to making love to a beautiful girl all alone, just the two
of them locked quietly away from prying eyes. True, it had turned out
that a lot of his experiences had been judged by Venus and any other God
who felt like looking in, but Forrester hadn't known that at the time
and, in any case, the spectators had been invisible and thus ignorable.

Now, however, he was on the greensward of Central Park, within full view
of a couple of thousand drunken revelers, all of whom, if not otherwise
occupied, asked for nothing be