“Didn’t!”

“You did.”

“Didn’t!  Didn’t!”

“I don’t—­”

“You do, you do,” insisted the Girl, plumping down into the chair which she had vacated at the table.

“Do you mean to say—­” Johnson got no further, for the Girl, with a naivete that made her positively bewitching to the man before her, went on as if there had been no interruption: 

“That a feller could so wind h’ms’lf up as to say, ’Jest give me one hour o’ your sassiety; time ain’t nothin’, nothin’ ain’t nothin’ only to be a da—­darn fool over you!’ Ain’t it funny to feel like that?” And then, before Johnson could frame an answer: 

“Yet, I s’pose there are people that love into the grave an’ into death an’ after.”  The Girl’s voice lowered, stopped.  Then, looking straight ahead of her, her eyes glistening, she broke out with: 

“Golly, it jest lifts you right up by your bootstraps to think of it, don’t it?”

Johnson was not smiling now, but sat gazing intently at her through half-veiled lids.

“It does have that effect,” he answered, the wonder of it all creeping into his voice.

“Yet, p’r’aps he was ahead o’ the game.  P’r’aps—­” She did not finish the sentence, but broke out with fresh enthusiasm:  “Oh, say, I jest love this conversation with you!  I love to hear you talk!  You give me idees!”

Johnson’s heart was too full for utterance; he could only think of his own happiness.  The next instant the Girl called to Wowkle to bring the candle, while she, still eager and animated, her eyes bright, her lips curving in a smile, took up a cigar and handed it to him, saying: 

“One o’ your real Havanas!”

“But I”—­began Johnson, protestingly.

Nevertheless the Girl lit a match for him from the candle which Wowkle held up to her, and, while the latter returned the candle to the mantel, Johnson lighted his cigar from the burning match between her fingers.

“Oh, Girl, how I’d love to know you!” he suddenly cried with the fire of love in his eyes.

“But you do know me,” was her answer, as she watched the smoke from his cigar curl upwards toward the ceiling.

“Not well enough,” he sighed.

For a brief second only she was silent.  Whether she read his thoughts it would be difficult to say; but there came a moment soon when she could not mistake them.

“What’s your drift, anyway?” she asked, looking him full in the face.

“To know you as Dante knew the lady—­’One hour for me, one hour worth the world,’” he told her, all the while watching and loving her beauty.

At the thought she trembled a little, though she answered with characteristic bluntness: 

“He didn’t git it, Mr. Johnson.”

“All the same there are women we could die for,” insisted Johnson, dreamily.

The Girl was in the act of carrying her cup to her mouth but put it down on the table.  Leaning forward, she inquired somewhat sneeringly: