"Glad of what, darling?"
"That you married early. Come here."
She came and sat in his lap. He blew in her ears and at the short hairs on the nape of her neck until she laughed. "I love you," she said. "I love you so."
He loved her too. It was right. She was the girl he had selected. But a sense of urgency swept over him, not only for the love they would consummate as the night grew longer, but for what he hoped to learn from her so he could have the name as well as the game—as well as that feeling of adventure which sharpened his senses so acutely. He said, "Do you ever think of the times before multiple marriage became the accepted social institution? Do you ever think of how those people must have felt?"
"I knew you were an intellectual!" Jane-Marie cried instead of answering his question. "I just knew it. I could see it in your eyes, darling. Oh, I do love you."
He kissed her tenderly, then with fire. He could feel the passion mounting between them, but tore himself from its grasp. "Don't you ever think of it?" he asked again.
"Well, I read a book about it once, Murray's The Decline of Monogamy. They must have felt simply awful, darling. I mean, I love you, but to have to spend all that time, season after season, year after year, with the same person would—would drive you crazy. You'd get to know him so well, everything he did, the way he thought and all. Oh, with you it's different. I could spend forever with you three weeks, but—"
"No, Honey. I mean the others. The outcasts. Those who carried on adulterous relationships."
Jane-Marie frowned in thought. He could tell the conversation interested her but thought she would have preferred to drop it. Still, the conversation was flowing more smoothly than he had dared hope, and in the right direction.
"I don't know," Jane-Marie finally admitted. "I suppose they were pioneers, sort of. I mean, flaunting social custom the way they did because they were willing to fight for a better way of life."