"So that settles that," he said to himself.
Because as he continued to reflect he worked furiously, Jennie saw in him the being whom the lingo of the hour had taught her to call a caveman. In the motion-picture theaters she generally frequented, cavemen struggled with vampires in duels of passion and strength. Jennie longed to be loved by one of this race; and a caveman who came to her with violet eyes and a sweeping brown mustache possessed an appeal beyond the prehistoric. In spite of the challenge in her smile and the daring angle at which she held her chin, she waited in violent emotion for what he would say next.
"Oh, I sha'n't marry for years to come," he jerked out, still going on with his work. "Sha'n't be able to afford it. If I didn't have a few, a very few, hundred dollars a year, I couldn't pay you your miserable six a week."
She took this manfully. The head, with its ruby-red toque, to which a tobacco-colored wing gave the dash which was part of Jennie's personality, was perhaps poised a little more audaciously; but there was no other sign outside the wildness of her heart.
"Oh, well; you're only beginning your career as yet. One of these days you'll do a big portrait—"
"But, Jennie, marriage isn't everything."
It was the caveman's plea, the caveman's tone; and though Jennie knew she couldn't respond to it in practice, the depths of her being thrilled.
"No it isn't everything; but for a girl like me it's so much that—"
"Why specially for a girl like you?"
"Because her ring and her marriage lines are about all she's got to show. No woman can hold a man for more than—well, just so long; and when his heart's gone where is she, poor thing, except for the ring and the parson's name?"