"Oh, why do I pick out a poor poet, and not a millionaire, for a lover!"
There grew up between us a myth ... we were living in cave-days ... she was my cave-woman ... I was her cave-man....
As I came to her in my bath-robe (for now, bolder with seeming immunity, we threw caution aside, and met often in the little house)—
As I came to her in my bath-robe, unshaven, once ... she called me her Paphnutius ... and she was my Thaïs ... and she told me Anatole France's story of Thaïs.
But the cave-legend of our love ... in a previous incarnation ... was what spelled her most ... she doted on strength ... cruel, sheer, brute strength....
That I could carry her, lift her high up with ease, toss her about, rejoiced her to the utmost....
I caught her up in my arms, pleasing this humour, tossing her like a ball ... till my muscles were as sore as if I had fought through the two halves of a foot-ball game....
Out of all this play between us there grew a series of Cave Poems.
One of them I set aside to read at the sing, beside the camp-fire.