e? 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."

"There are only two," she said practically, "and they are very little
devils. But I won't let you come, because you would have much too good a
time." Then she relented. "Come later, about three, and teach me to
turkey-trot. You do it better than Polideon. And I hate to have him
touch me."

"That's something," he exclaimed triumphantly.

"What's something?"

"That you don't hate for me to touch you."

She laughed and tapped his shoulder in rag-time. Also she whistled, and
did a quiet suspicion of a turkey-trot with her feet.

VI

One bright morning in May, divinely early, t