The Secret Power | Page 8

said, half aloud--"If the
moon were the goddess Cynthia beloved of Endymion, as woman and
goddess in an impulse of vanity she would certainly have done that for
effect! As it is--"

Here he paused,--an instinctive feeling warned him that some one was
looking at him, and he turned his head quickly. On the slope of the hill
where Manella had lately stood, there was a figure, white as the white
moonlight itself, outlined delicately against the dark background. It
seemed to be poised on the earth like a bird just lightly descended; in
the stirless air its garments appeared closed about it fold on fold like
the petals of an unopened magnolia flower. As he looked, it came
gliding towards him with the floating ease of an air bubble, and the
strong radiance of the large moon showed its woman's face, pale with
the moonbeam pallor, and set in a wave of hair that swept back from
the brows and fell in a loosely twisted coil like a shining snake
stealthily losing itself in folds of misty drapery. He rose to meet the
advancing phantom.
"Entirely for effect!" he said, "Well planned and quite worthy of you!
All for effect!"
CHAPTER II
A laugh, clear and cold as a sleigh-bell on a frosty night rang out on the
silence.
"Why did you run away from me?"
He replied at once, and brusquely.
"Because I was tired of you!"
She laughed again. A strange white elf as she looked In the spreading
moonbeams she was woman to the core, and the disdainful movement
of her small uplifted head plainly expressed her utter indifference to his
answer.
"I followed you"--she said--"I knew I should find you! What are you
doing up here? Shamming to be ill?"
"Precisely! 'Sham' is as much in my line as yours. I have to 'pretend' in
order to be real!"

"Paradoxical as usual!" and she shrugged her shoulders--"Anyway
you've chosen a good place to do your shamming in. It's quite lovely up
here,--much better than the Plaza. I am at the Plaza."
"Automobile and all I suppose!" he said, sarcastically--"How many
servants?--how many boxes with how many dresses?"
She laughed again.
"That's no concern of yours!" she replied--"I am my own mistress."
"More's the pity!" he retorted.
They faced each other. The moon, now soaring high in clear space,
shed a luminous rain of silver over all the visible breadth of wild
country, and their two figures looked mere dark silhouettes half
drowned in the pearly glamour.
"It's worth travelling all the long miles to see!" she declared, stretching
her arms out with an enthusiastic gesture--"Oh, beautiful big moon of
California! I'm glad I came!"
He was silent.
"You are not glad!" she continued--"You are a bear-man in hiding, and
the moon says nothing to you!"
"It says nothing because it IS nothing"--he answered, impatiently-- "It
is a dead planet without heart,--a mere shell of extinct volcanoes where
fire once burned, and its light is but the reflection of the sun on its
barren surface. It is like all women,-- but mostly like YOU!"
She made him a sweeping curtsy so exquisitely graceful that the action
resembled nothing so much as the sway of a lily in a light wind.
"Thanks, gentle Knight!--flower of chivalry!" she said--"I see you love
me in spite of yourself!"
He made a quick stride towards her,--then stopped. "Love you!" he

echoed,--then laughed loudly and derisively-"Great God! Love you?
YOU? If I did I should be mad! When will you learn the truth of
me?--that women are less in my estimation than the insects crawling on
a blade of grass or spawning in a stagnant pond?--that they have no
power to move me to the smallest pulse of passion or desire?--and that
you, of all your sex, seem to my mind the most--"
"Hateful?" she suggested, smilingly.
"No--the most complete and unmitigated bore!"
"Dreadful!" and she made a face at him like that of a naughty
child,--then she sank down on the sun-baked turf in an easy half-
reclining attitude--"It's certainly much worse to be a bore than to be
hated. Hate is quite a live sentiment,--besides it always means, or HAS
meant--love! You can't hate anything that is quite indifferent to you,
but of course you CAN be bored! YOU are bored by me and I am bored
by YOU!--and we are absolutely indifferent to each other! What a
comedy it is! Isn't it?"
He stood still and sombre, gazing down at the figure resting on the
ground at his feet, its white garments gathering about it as though they
were sentiently aware that they must keep the line of classic beauty in
every fold.
"Boredom is the trouble"--she went on--"No one escapes it. The very
babies of to-day are bored. We all