"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?
"Come," said Barbara, after quite a long silence, "let's go forth and collar a taxi. Anywhere I can take you? I can't ask you to lunch, because I am having seven maidens, and afterward Victor Polideon to teach us to turkey-trot."
"I wouldn't be afraid of seven devils," Wilmot urged in his own behalf, "if you were present."