"Try me again," she said, looking up at me, and the devil in her eyes.
But already I was becoming sensible of the ever-living enchantment of this young thing, so wise in stratagems and spoils of Love, and I chose to leave my scalp hang drying at her lodge door beside the scanter pol of Billy Alexander.
For God knows this vixen-virgin spared neither young nor old, but shot them through and through at sight with those heavenly darts from her twin eyes.
And no man, so far, could boast of obtaining from Mistress Swift the least token or any serious guerdon that his quest might lead him by a single step toward Hymen's altar, but only to that cruel arena where all her victims agonized under the mocking sweetness of her smile, and her pretty, down-turned and merciless thumbs—the little Vestal villain!
"No, Claudia," quoth I, "you have taken my bow and spear, and shorn me of my thatch like any Mohawk. No; I go to Fonda's Bush——" I smiled, "—to heal, perhaps, my heart, as you say; but, anyhow, to consult my soul, and armour it in a wilderness."
"A hermit!" she exclaimed scornfully, "—and afeard of a maid armed only with two matched eyes, a nose, a mouth and thirty teeth!"
"Afeard of a monster more frightful than that," said I, laughing.
"Of what monster, John Drogue?"
"Of that red monster that is surely, surely creeping northward to surprise and rend us all," said I in a low voice. "And so I shall retire to question my secret soul, and arm it cap-à-pie as God directs."
She was looking at me intently. After a silence she said: