“Life,” he said at last, “is a nuisance, Barbs.  Isn’t it?  Would you, honestly, be happier if I disappeared, and never bothered you again?  Sometimes I feel that I ought to.”

She shook her head.  “If you like people,” she said, “you like them, faults and all.  I’m dependent on you in a hundred ways.  You’re the oldest and best friend I’ve got.  If you disappeared I’d curl up and die.  But now that we are talking personalities, you very nearly forgot yourself a few minutes ago.  Well, I forgive.  But it mustn’t happen again.”

He bowed his head very humbly.  “I will go back to patience and gentleness,” he said, “and give them another trial.”

“I wish,” she said, “that you would go back and begin your life over again—­stop drifting and sail for some definite harbor.”

“I will,” he said, “on condition—­”

“No—­no—­no,” she said hurriedly, “no condition.  I am in no position to make conditions, if that’s what you mean.  I don’t understand myself.  I don’t trust myself.  I will not undertake to bind myself to you or any one until I know that I can trust myself.  It would be very jolly for you if I married you and then we found that I really loved the other fellow.  I’m like that—­selfish, unstable, susceptible—­and very much ashamed of myself.  I wouldn’t talk myself down so if you didn’t know these things as well as I do.  Why you go on caring for me is a mystery.  I’m no good.  And I’m not even sorry enough to cry about it—­ever.  I’ve actually thought that I was in love—­oh, ever so many times:  sometimes with you.  What’s the use?  The only things I’ve ever been faithful to are the dressmaker, dancing, and what in moments of supreme egoism I am pleased to call my art.”

“Barbs,” he said, “you’re an old silly billy, and I love you with all my heart and soul.  That’s that.  Don’t forget it.  Take pen and ink if necessary and write it down.  I’ll try a little more patience, and then, my blessing, if there’s no good in that, I shall perpetrate marriage by capture.”

They both laughed, the girl with much sweetness.  And she said: 

“If you and I ever do marry, it will be with great suddenness.”  Her eyes danced, and she added:  “There are moments!”

“Thank you,” he said gravely, and then with a kind of wistful gallantry:  “Could I kiss the dear for luck?”

She turned her cheek to him bravely and frankly like a child.  His lips touched it lightly, making no sound.

Far off in the native jungle the cave-man moaned, and shut his eyes and turned his face to the wall of his cave.  The medicine-man came, examined him, and said that he was about to die of a new disease.  He looked very wise and called it “predatory inanition.”

As for the cave-girl, having run and run and run, she pulled up in a flowery glade, looked behind, listened, saw nothing, heard no sound of painfully pursuing feet, and called herself a fool and a silly for having run.  She wanted to explain that she hadn’t meant to run away, that girls never really meant what they said, and would the cave-man please recover at once from his predatory inanition and take notice of her again?