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Abner put an arm around her and leaned over to kiss her with a jubilant relieved feeling.

"You don't have to apologize, Adelaide!" he cried, and pressed his lips toward her mouth.

Adelaide laughed, but turned her face quickly away. "Let's don't spoon here on the road. I was just counting your good points aloud. Goodness knows I've counted them a thousand times to myself.—You like to hear them, don't you?"

"Shore I do!" cried the youth, but in his heart he felt the lack of that intimate feeling which he had known with Nessie. This girl, somehow, was so self-contained she excluded him completely.

"Abner, let me ask now, if it will be all right with you, after we are married, for me to dance with other men?"

"Why—yes," drawled Abner, surprised, but not feeling the slightest jealousy of anticipation.

"And I want other men to call on me and be nice to me, just as they do to other married women in other places. Why, I think it's awful the way the Lanesburg women do. When they get married they bury themselves. They have no mixed social life at all. They never really talk to anybody except other women and their husbands. Why, Abner, that's not civilized! No wonder they grow into a lot of tittle-tattles and backbiters; women just naturally get that way unless they see a lot of men—just as men get profane and vulgar if they don't see a lot of women. If folks would just use their sex right, it would keep them sweet!"

During this outburst Adelaide gradually had stopped her car. Now they were standing still and she stated her position with more passion than she had spoken of their marriage.

"Why, ye-es," agreed Abner, "I guess that's right."

"I want to lead a human life, even here in Lanesburg. Of course, I'll have to stay here. Daddy's property is like a great big ball and chain. It will be one around you, too, Abner. Neither of us can ever possibly get away. Nobody