into the other.

"Gee! you're pretty, Marylin!"

"Are I, Getaway?"

"You know you are. You wasn't born with one eye shut and the other
blind."

"Honest, I don't know. Sometimes I look in the mirror and hope so."

"You've had enough fellows tell you so."

"Yes, but--but not the kind of fellows that mean by pretty what _I_ mean
by pretty."

"Well, this here guy means what you mean by pretty."

"What do you mean by pretty, Getaway?"

"Pep. Peaches. Cream. Teeth. Yellow hair. Arms. Le--those little holes
in your cheeks. Dimples. What do I mean by pretty? I mean you by pretty.
Ain't that what you want me to mean by pretty?"

"Yes--and no--"

"Well, what the--"

"It's all right, Getaway. It's fine to be pretty, but--not
enough--somehow. I--I can't explain it to you--to anybody. I guess
pretty isn't the word. It's beauty I mean."

"All right, then, anything your little heart desires--beauty."

"The ocean beauty out there, I mean. Something that makes you hurt
and want to hurt more and more. Beauty, Getaway. It's something you
understand or something you don't. It can't be talked. It sounds silly."

"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.