ed in protest, "I know it. I love that
little creamy satin hollow at the base of your throat."

"You've never s----" The scarlet flamed up. She was human.

"I know it. But I love it just the same." Pretty good for a tall thin
young man who worked in the offices of the Okoochee Oil and Refining
Company.

Sometimes he said, "I'm darned certain you like me"--bravely--"love me.
Why won't you marry me? Cut out all this slaving. I could support you.
Not in much luxury, maybe, but----"

"And settle down in Okoochee! Never see anything! Stuck in this
God-forsaken hole! This drab, dull, oil-soaked village! When there are
wonderful people, wonderful places, colour, romance, beauty! Damascus!
Mandalay! Singapore! Hongkong!... Hongkong! It sounds like a temple
bell. It thrills me."

"Over in Hongkong," said Arnold Hatch, "I expect some Chinese Maxine
Pardee would say, Okoochee! It sounds like an Indian war drum. It
thrills me.'"

Sometimes Maxine showed signs of melting. But she always congealed
again under the influence of her resolve. One evening an out-of-town
diner, on hearing her name, said, "Pardee! Hm. Probably a corruption of
Pardieu. A French name originally, I suppose."

After that there was no approaching her for a week. Maxine Pardieu.
Pardieu. "By God!" it meant. A chevalier he must have been, this
Pardieu. A musketeer! A swashbuckler, with lace falling over his slim
white hand, and his hand always ready on his sword. Red heels. Plumed
hat. Pardieu!

How she hated anew the great oil tanks that rose on the town's
outskirts, guarding it like giant sentinels. The new houses. The new
country club. Twenty-one miles of asphalt road. Population in 1900, only
467. In 1920 over 35,000. Slogan, Watch Us Grow. Seventeen hundred oil
and gas wells. Fields of corn and cotton. Skyscrapers. The Watonga
Building, twelve stories. Haynes Block, fourteen stories. Come West,
young man! Ugh!

Sometimes she made little rhymes in her mind.

There's Singapore and Zanzibar,
And Cairo and Calais.
There's Samarkand and Alcazar,
Rangoon and Mandalay.

"Yeh," said Arnold Hatch, one evening, when they were talking in the
Pardee back yard. It was nine o'clock. Dishes done. A moon. October.
Maxine had just murmured her little quatrain. They were standing by the
hedge of pampas grass that separated the Pardee yard from Hatch's next
door.

"Yeh," said Arnold Hatch. "Likewise:

"There's Seminole and Shawnee,
Apache, Agawa