I tried always to remember, in her behalf, that she
did not know the circumstances, and she herself very soon discovered
that she did not know Jim. The assaults she made upon his fidelity
proved her to be past-mistress of tactics and strategy. No possible
approach to his heart did she leave untried. She flattered and petted,
lured, cajoled, entreated; she menaced, commanded, stormed, raged.
Drawing inspiration from a siege celebrated in antiquity, she sought to
secrete her forces--not in a horse of wood, but within the frames of
numerous fowl, picked to the bone but shredded over so temptingly with
fugitive succulence as to have made a dog of feelings less fine her
slave for life.
It was not until the desperate woman had, in the terminology of Billy
Durgin, been "baffled and beaten at every turn," that I could get into
communication with her on a basis at all acceptable to a free-necked
man. Having proved to the last resource of her ingenuity that Jim was
more than human in his loyalty, she seemed disposed to admit, though
grudgingly enough, that I myself might be not less than human to have
won him so utterly. And thereafter I found it often practicable to
associate with her on terms of apparent equality.
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