"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 Thais ... and she told me Anatole France's story of _Thais_. 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. * * * * * They had chorused _Up With the Bonnet for Bonny Dundee_ and _You Take the Highway_.... There ran a ripple of talk while they waited for me. In the red glow of the camp-fire I towered over the stocky little husband as he introduced me. Hildreth was sitting there ... I must make a good impression before my mate. All I saw was she--too patently, I fear. I went through poem after poem, entranced with the melody of my verse ... mostly delicate, evanescent stuff ... like this one ... "THE EMPEROR TO HIS LOVE "I've a green garden with a grey wall 'round Where even the wind's foot-fall makes no sound; There let us go and from ambition flee, Accepting love's brief immortality. Let other rulers hugely labour still Beneath the burden of ambition's ill Like caryatids heaving up the strain Of mammoth chambers, till they stoop again ... Your face has changed my days to splendid dreams And baubled trumpets, traffics, and triremes; One swift touch of your passion-parted lips Is worth five armies and ten seas of ships." Hildreth's applause was sweet. My heart almost burst with happiness within me, as those tiny hands, that had run through my hair and been so wonderful with me ... hands that I had kissed and fondled in secret--joined in unison with Penton's and Darrie's and Ruth's hand-claps. "And now I will finish with the _Song of Kaa, the Cave-Man_," I announced ... it seemed that the poem was not, after all, in the bunch of MSS. I had brought along with me.... At last I found it--and read: "THE SONG OF KAA