after Jenny and Talliaferro . . . Ah, he’s all right, though. He'll show up soon. He ain’t the sort to get drowned.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” Major Ayers said. “There are no women missing, you know.”
Fairchild laughed his burly appreciative laugh. Then he met Major Ayers’ glassy solemn stare, and ceased. Then he laughed once more, somewhat after the manner of one feeling his way into a dark room, and ceased again, turning on Major Ayers his trustful baffled expression. Major Ayers said:
“This place to which these young people went to-day—” “Mandeville,” the Semitic man supplied. “—what sort of a place is it?” They told him. “Ah, yes. They have facilities for that sort of thing, eh?”
“Well, not more than usual,” the Semitic man answered, and Fairchild said, still watching Major Ayers with a sort of cautious bafflement:
“Not any more than you can carry along with you. We Americans always carry our own facilities with us. It’s living high tension go-getting lives like we do in this country, you see.”
Major Ayers glared at him politely. “Somewhat like the Continent,” he suggested after a time.
“Not exactly,” the Semitic man said. “In America you often find an H in caste.” Fairchild and Major Ayers stared at the Semitic man.
“As well as a cast in chaste,” Mark Frost put in. Fairchild and Major Ayers now stared at him, watching him while he lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of his present one, and left his chair and went to lie at full length on the deck.
“Why not?” the Semitic man took him up. “Love itself is stone blind.”
“It has to be,” Mark Frost answered. Major Ayers stared from one to the other for a while. He said:
