Mamma overheard me saying that the other day and thought I had gone crazy, and she said: "for Heaven's sake, Hermione, what are you thinking about, and what do you want?"
"The stars," I murmured, scarcely knowing that
I spoke aloud, "the stars and my Cave Man!"
Mamma was shocked — she says for an unmarried woman to think of Cave Men is simply indelicate.
Mamma is not at all advanced, you know.
She's dear and sweet, but she doesn't believe in
Trial Marriages at all.
And I must admit they shocked me when I first heard about them. But that was before I had taken up these things seriously.
"Mamma," I said to her, "it is no use for you to pretend to be shocked. I have a right to happiness. And happiness to me means being alone, under the stars, and walking barefoot and bareheaded in the dew."
"Alone with a Cave Man!" she said. And then she cried.
Tears! — that is so like the old-fashioned woman!
"Mamma," I said, kindly, but firmly, "If it is my destiny to be kidnaped by a Cave Man and taken into the waste places, under the stars, can I avoid it?"