Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/291

 and he was willing to let her be a sybarite, if she would be just that and nothing else; but she wasn't. An eternal restlessness possessed her. She was always wanting to go somewhere—to do something that had never been done before. She had a fertile imagination and proved what an astonishing number of absurd enterprises one young woman can think of to propose when she has upward of three millions at her back and abundance of time upon her hands. But one day these proposals appeared to reach the climax of absurdity.

"Wha-a-at!" George ejaculated with coarse incredulity, his heavy brows lifted, his black comb-back seeming to rise along a ridge in its center, so great was his astonishment. "Head an expedition to search for the Garden of Eden? Me!"

Fay flushed but stood her ground. "Why, yes, George!" she enthused, sweetly radiant with innocent enthusiasm. "The Mesopotamian Valley is the most romantic place—cradle of history, you know—all full of ruins and cute little inscriptions on sun-baked bricks—important political records mixed in with letters schoolboys wrote to their fathers asking for money—thousands of years ago—letters of lovers to sweethearts, too."

"Oh, I see," scoffed George. "When a girl