"You're always bored," grunted her husband, unsympathetically. "Can you wonder at it, when I have to go round and round and round in a decorated ring like a trick-pony? If I were a woman it would be satisfactory, no doubt." "Well," said Jim, obtusely, "ain't you a woman?" Leah sprang from her chair and flung out her arms with a deep chest breath. "I am a man," she announced, in resonant contralto tones. "I feel like one, anyhow. Didn't some one say there was no sense in this grown-up business. Well, I am like that. Up to the time you went after Lola Fajardo I did enjoy things all round, but somehow I feel as though the bottom had dropped out of creation." "Drop Lola Fajardo also, then," growled the Duke, colouring. "I never went near her." "Because you couldn't. The serpent in the bamboo--eh, Jim?" "I don't care anything for her now." Leah looked at him steadily. "I am glad of that, because you belong to me--to me." "And much you think of me!" "I think you are extremely selfish, and desperately weak with even ugly women, and quite a brute when you don't get your own pretty way, and--in short, you are a man, a glorious lord of creation." "Oh, drop rottin'." "I am not rotting, as you delicately put it. Like myself, this sugary civilisation has spoiled you. If you had to earn your bread I should respect you, Jim. I might even love you. Yes"--she considered for a moment--"I daresay it might come to that." Jim was growing bewildered. "What does all this mean?" was his very natural interrogation. His wife bewildered him still more by acting in a way which made him gasp. She walked round the table, and, standing at his back, placed her arms round his neck. "I'll tell you, Jim. I have just found out by my very own self that you and I are cave-people pitchforked into the wrong century. We live ten thousand years too late--just think of it--ten thousand years of life and death. Let us go back to the mud, Jim, and take up the life where we left it when you were killed, spearing that mammoth." "Leah!" His head was thrown back, and his eyes stared upward in alarm. "I know what you think, but I am as sane as you are, and ten times cleverer. No"; she loosened her arms from his neck and locked them behind her. "Look at me, Jim. Am I a doll?" The startled Duke wheeled his chair and stared at her brilliant eyes, no longer hard and cold, at her stately figure, her splendid red hair, her clearly cut face flushed and animated. "You're a rippin' fine woman," said he, his sluggish pulses stirred.