For there came a knock at his door after his second day of absenting himself, and when he incautiously opened it, she marched in and took him gaily into her unembarrassed arms and bestowed upon his astonished countenance a hearty, wholesome and vigorous smack. Moreover, she laughed and jeered and tormented and poked merciless fun at him until she had badgered and worried and hectored and beaten the sulkiness out of him. Then she admonished him:
"Don't ever do it again!" she said. "We are free, you and I. What we are to each other alone concerns us, not what we may choose to do or be to others."
"You don't care what I do, Steve," he said.
"I care what you do to me!"
"How I behave otherwise doesn't concern you?"
"No. It would be an impertinence for me to meddle. For," she added in smiling paraphrase:
"If you are not nice to me
What care I how nice you be—
to other girls?"
"Do you really mean that it wouldn't make any difference to you what I do? Suppose I take you at your word and become enamoured of some girl and devote myself to her?"
"You mean a nice girl, don't you?" she inquired.