's been but such a
little time! I don't know whether I can get over it--I don't know
whether I can forget. But, oh, Curly, for one hour let me open my
heart--for just this time let me be a woman!... But it wasn't for him!"

And now she was whispering again.

"I'm a thief, Curly!" says she after a while. "I've stolen your life and
dad's. I've taken all you gave me. I don't deserve it."

"Oh, yes, you do," says I; "you deserved all we done for you. We loved
you, Honey, and we do now."

"But you can't any more, Curly," says she. "I've been a thief. I've
stolen your lives--from you two big, splendid men. But, oh! give me my
hour--the one hour out of all my life.

"I stole from him too--from Tom," says she. "I've taken from him what I
didn't pay for and can't. I never can. At least I can't until I've
had--my hour.

"A woman has to face things all her life, Curly," says she; "and always
she says: 'Well, let it be!' She takes her losses, Curly, and sometimes
she forgets. But if she ever forgets what is in my heart tonight--if she
forgets that--then life is never worth while to her again. There's
nothing to do then--it's all a sham and a fraud. If that's what life
means I don't want to live any more."

"Bonnie," says I, "you mustn't talk that way." I sort of drew her down
on my knee now, and pushed her hair back and looked at her. "Listen at
you--you that used to be up in the morning so early and hoorahing all
through the ranch--your cheeks red with the sun, and your hair blowing,
and your eyes like a deer's! Why, nothing but life was in the world for
you then--nothing but just being alive."

"I wasn't a woman then, Curly," says she. "I didn't know."

"I didn't neither," says I; "and I don't know now."

"You can't," says she. "It's terrible! I'm--I think I'll go now."

She taken herself off my knee then; and, the first thing I know, she was
gone.

I stayed there looking at the place where she'd been. I knew that now
there shore was hell to pay!

XXIV

HOW BONNIE BELL LEFT US ALL

I never went to bed none at all that night. I couldn't of slept, nohow.
I set there in the ranch room thinking and trying to figure out what I
had ought to do. I concluded that might depend some on what Bonnie Bell
was going to do; and I couldn't tell what that was, for she didn't seem
clear about it herself.

Along about daybreak, maybe sooner, when I set there--maybe I'd been
asleep once or twice a little--I heard the noi