"What an amusing person you are!" she said. "I've had hard work holding in all this time while you were torturing your mind and twisting the honest English language out of shape and meaning. I knew I should have to laugh sooner or later."
"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded. "Is it a joke?"
"Indeed it is," she declared, laughing afresh, "and the best I've ever enjoyed. Wasn't it funny, Poleon"—she turned gayly to the Frenchman, but he stood like one petrified—"to see him debating coolly whether he cared for me enough to face the world with me, and trying to explain to you that he was too good to marry a squaw? Oh, you were very gentlemanly about it, sir, and you wouldn't have hurt my feelings for the world!"
"Necia!"
"That's your Dixie chivalry, I suppose. Well, I've played with you long enough, Lieutenant Burrell, I'm tired of the game, and you interest me no longer."
"You—you—say you've been playing with me!" stammered the man. The bottom of things seemed suddenly to slide from under him; he was like one sinking in some hideous quagmire. He felt as if he were choking.
"Why, of course," she cried, scornfully, "just as you took me up for amusement. You were such a fine, well-dressed, immaculate mound of conceit that I couldn't resist the temptation, and you hid your condescension so poorly that I thought you ought to be taken down a peg. I knew I was a squaw, but I wanted to see if I were not like other women, after all, and if you were not like other men." She was talking rapidly now, almost shrilly, for she had never attempted to act before, while he stood dazed and speechless, fumbling at his throat while she railed at him. "You needn't waste time debating whether I'm good enough for you, because I'm not—decidedly, I'm not your kind, and you are a joke to me."
He uttered an inarticulate cry, but she ran on unheeding, her eyes wide and glowing like coals, her lips chalk-white. "You see, it's time I stopped such foolishness, anyhow, for I'm to be married on Sunday."
"You are going to be married?" he muttered, laboriously.
"Yes, to Poleon. Why, that's been understood for years."