Ethra saw him coming, and his stride and expression scared her. Not knowing exactly what to do, and not anticipating such a frame of mind in him, she turned over in her hammock and pretended to be asleep, as his figure loomed up in the mouth of the cave.
"Miss Leslie!" His voice was stentorian.
She awoke languidly, and did it very well, making a charming picture as she sat up in her hammock, a trifle confused, sweet blue eyes scarcely yet unclosed.
"Mr. Langdon!" she exclaimed in soft surprise.
He looked her squarely, menacingly, in the eyes.
"I suppose," he said, "that all this is a grim parody on the past when women did the waiting until it was men's pleasure to make the next move. I suppose that my recent appraisement parallels the social inspection of a debutante—that my present hunger is paying for the wistful intellectual starvation to which men once doomed your sex; that my isolation represents the isolation from all that was vital in the times when women's opportunities were few and restricted; that my probation among you symbolises the toleration of my sex for whatever specimen of your sex they captured and set their mark on as belonging to them, and on view to the world during good behaviour."
He stared at her flushed face, thoughtfully.
"The allegory is all right," he said, "but you've cast the wrong man for the goat. I'm going."
"Y-you can't go," she stammered, colouring painfully, "unless I give you a pass."
"I see; it resembles divorce. My sex had to give yours a cause for escape, or you couldn't escape. And in here you must give me a pass to freedom, or I remain here and starve. Is that it?"