"I am afraid I don't follow you," said Apache Kid.
"But you do follow me," she said. "All you want to do is to let yourself go—let that bit of yourself go and have its way—that bit that you always make the other half of you sit and jeer at!"
She paused, and then shaking her finger again remarked solemnly:
"Or you 'll maybe find that the good, likeable half o' you ain't a half no longer, only a quarter, dwindled down to a quarter, and the half of you that puts up this bluff in the face of men becomes three-quarter then. I 'm thinking I would n't like you so good then, Apache Kid! Not but what I 'd be——" she hesitated, "sorry for you like," she said.
"To win your sorrow, Mrs. Laughlin," said he, looking on her solemnly, "would be a desirable thing."
She gazed at him a long while, and to my utter astonishment, for I did not quite understand all this, there were tears in her eyes when she said, as to herself, "Yes, you mean that."
She sighed, and then said she: "What you need is to settle down with a good, square, honest girl. If I was younger like myself——" she broke off merrily.
Apache Kid looked her in the face with interested eyes.
"I wish I knew just what you were like, just how you spoke and acted when you were—in the position you have suggested as desirable."
"Would you have had me?" she said.