the history books.” The Semitic man chuckled. Fairchild tried to see his face in the obscurity. Then he said:
“Englishmen are funny folks: always kidding you at the wrong time. Things just on the verge of probability, and just when you have made up your mind to take it one way, you find they meant it the other.” He mused a while in the darkness.
“It was kind of nice, wasn’t it? Young people, young men and girls caught in that strange hushed magic of sex and the mystery of intimate clothing and functions and all, and of lying side by side in the darkness, telling each other things . . . that’s the charm of virginity: telling each other things. Virginity don’t make any difference as far as the body’s concerned. Young people running away together in a flurry of secrecy and caution and desire, and getting there to find”. . . again he turned his kind, baffled face toward his friend. He continued after a while.
“Of course the girls would be persuaded, after they’d come that far, wouldn’t they? You know—strange surroundings, a strange room like an island in an uncharted sea full of monsters like landlords and strangers and such; the sheer business of getting their bodies from place to place and feeding ’em and caring for ’em; and your young man thwarted and lustful and probably fearful that you’d change your mind and back out altogether, and a strange room all secret and locked and far away from familiar things and you young and soft and nice to look at and knowing it, too. . . . Of course they’d be persuaded.
“And, of course, when they got back home they wouldn’t tell, not until another parson turned up and everything was all regular again. And maybe not then. Maybe they’d whisper it to a friend some day, after they’d been married long enough to prefer talking to other women to talking to their
