Again I told her the simple truth. "There was a time; yes. It was when I was still young enough to carry your books back and forth on the way to and from the old school."
"But you got bravely over it, after awhile?"
"Yes; I got over it after I grew up."
She laughed softly.
"Don't you know that is a frightfully dangerous thing to say to a woman—to any woman, Bertie?"
"It is the honest thing to say to you."
"I suppose it is. Yet there are some things a woman likes better than honesty. Perhaps you haven't been making love to the Cripple Creek girl long enough to find that out. But it is so, and it always will be so."
It was at the outer door opening that she gave me the final stab.
"I am taking your business excuse at its face value to-night and letting you go. But the next time you come you mustn't have any business; at least, nothing more important than entertaining me—and that is important. Just jot that down in your little vest-pocket memorandum, and don't allow yourself to forget it for a single moment; not even while you are making love to Little Brown-Eyes. Good-night."
The old-fashioned preachers used to describe a terrifying hell in which fire and brimstone and all manner of physical torments awaited the impenitent. I was brought up to believe implicitly in such a hell, but the puerility of it as compared with the refined tortures which I endured that winter can never be set forth in any words of mine.