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62 taken more from you than I'm used to taking." She had stopped abruptly, had laughed and had said: "Well, never mind. It all falls under the heading of art."

"I'm at a disadvantage," Ken had said.

"How come?"

"If you'd spent your whole life except for seventy-seven days in the middle of Texas—"

"How do you know it's seventy-seven days," she had asked.

"I counted 'em."

"You would." She had brusquely patted his cheek. "Come on—on with the dance."

Women, Ken told himself, were like that. They apparently expected a man to make a play for them. The trouble with him was that he didn't know where to begin with Anita. Back home in Selma, things were different. The girls were all someone's sister or daughter. At parties, with alkie and water added, things sometimes did happen. Tall tales were told in the abandoned frame house on Council Street about happenings after dances, football games and meetings of the Selma High Social Club. Ken had heard these stories. He did not always believe them. He had seen little with his own eyes. And an influence more powerful than his own will seemed to restrain him from participating in the more daring "binges" of the less restrained high school crowd.

In Selma, he had met no one like Anita. Her complete independence, the carefree attitude she assumed, her not infrequent stories of her old life in various parts of the west, made it difficult for Ken to judge her. If she had been younger and simpler he might have wondered