"I can gratify your humor with a right good will—only the lady I would make love to despises me."
"I'll never believe it," she declared, and it was evident that she meant what she said.
"That is because you have only a vague idea of the cruelty of woman when she has a man at her mercy—and knows it."
"I should like to see some woman at your mercy," she said. "No doubt you would give free play to the strap and the rawhide and other implements of the slave-driver."
Her words made me wince, and I must have shown the wound, for when I looked at her her countenance wore an expression of regret and repentance. "You must forgive me," she declared. "If we were to be thrown together you would have to forgive me fifty times a day."
"Well, I thank heaven," I exclaimed, with some feeling, "that I was never at the mercy of more than one woman, and that fact was mitigated somewhat. She was arrayed in the garb of a man, and I was so sorry for her that I forgot she had me at her mercy."
"You should have told her," the little lady declared. "Perhaps if she had known her conduct would have been vastly different. You never know what a woman will do until she has been put to the test."
"She did a good deal," I said, sullenly. "She called me a coward, a rebel, and a traitor."
"Then she must have been in despair," replied the little lady in the most matter-of-fact way. "When you are a little older you will discover that despair has an anger all its own. But I hope you will never feel it," she sighed. "Anyone can I see that you know very little about women."
"I hope my ignorance does me no harm," I suggested.