liked it. And the modern woman, so we are told, would still like it if only one dared to try it on. There’s the trouble; if one only dared!
I see lots of them—I’ll be frank about it—that I should like to grab, to sling over my shoulder and carry away with me; or, what is the same thing, allowing for modern conditions, have an express man carry them. I notice them at Atlantic City, I see them in Fifth Avenue—yes, everywhere.
But would they come? That’s the deuce of it. Would they come right along, like the cave-woman, merely biting off my ear as they came, or are they degenerate enough to bring an action against me, indicting the express company as a party of the second part?
Doubts such as these prevent me from taking active measures. But they leave me, as they leave many another man, preoccupied and fascinated with the cave-man.
One may imagine, then, my extraordinary interest in him when I actually met him in the flesh. Yet the thing came about quite simply, indeed more by accident than by design, an adventure open to all.
It so happened that I spent my vacation in Kentucky—the region, as everybody knows, of the great caves. They extend—it is a matter of common knowledge—for hundreds of miles;
93
