The Secret Power | Page 9

know too much. People used to be
happy because they were ignorant--they had no sort of idea why they
were born, or what they came into the world for. Now they've learned
the horrid truth that they are only here just as the trees and flowers are
here--to breed other trees and flowers and then go out of it--for no
purpose, apparently. They are 'disillusioned.' They say 'what's the use?'
To put up with so much trouble and labour for the folks coining after us
whom we shall never see,--it seems perfectly foolish and futile. They
used to believe in another life after this--but that hope has been
knocked out of them. Besides it's quite open to question whether any of
us would care to live again. Probably it might mean more boredom.
There's really nothing left. That's why so many of us go reckless--it's

just to escape being bored."
He listened in cold silence. After a pause--
"Have you done?" he said.
She looked up at him. The moonbeams set tiny frosty sparkles in her
eyes.
"Have I done?" she echoed--"No,--not quite! I love talking--and it's a
new and amusing sensation for me to talk to a man in his shirt- sleeves
on a hill in California by the light of the moon! So wild and picturesque
you know! All the men I've ever met have been dressed to death! Have
you had your dinner?"
"I never dine," he replied.
"Really! Don't you eat and drink at all?"
"I live simply,"--he said--"Bread and milk are enough for me, and I
have these."
She laughed and clapped her hands.
"Like a baby!" she exclaimed--"A big bearded baby! It's too delicious!
And you're doing all this just to get away from ME! What a
compliment!"
With angry impetus he bent over her reclining figure and seized her
two hands.
"Get up!" he said harshly--"Don't lie there like a fallen angel!"
She yielded to his powerful grasp as he pulled her to her feet--then
looked at him still laughing.
"Plenty of muscle!" she said--"Well?"
He held her hands still and gripped them fiercely. She gave a little cry.

"Don't! You forget my rings,--they hurt!"
At once he loosened his hold, and gazed moodily at her small fingers
on which two or three superb diamond circlets glittered like drops of
dew.
"Your rings!" he said--"Yes--I forgot them! Wonderful rings!--
emblems of your inordinate vanity and vulgar wealth--I forgot them!
How they sparkle in this wide moonlight, don't they? Just a drifting of
nature's refuse matter, turned into jewels for women! Strange ordinance
of strange elements! There!" and he let her hands go free- -"They are
not injured, nor are you."
She was silent pouting her under-lip like a spoilt child, and rubbing one
finger where a ring had dinted her flesh.
"So you actually think I have coma here to get away from YOU?" he
went on--"Well for once your ineffable conceit is mistaken. You think
yourself a personage of importance--but you are nothing,--less than
nothing to me, I never give you a thought--I have come here to
study--to escape from the crazy noise of modern life--the hurtling to
and fro of the masses of modern humanity,--I want to work out certain
problems which may revolutionise the world and its course of living--"
"Why revolutionise it?" she interrupted--"Who wants it to be
revolutionised? We are all very well as we are--it's a breeding place and
a dying place--voila tout!"
She gave a French shrug of her shoulder and waved her hands
expressively. Then she pushed back her flowing hair,--the moonbeams
trickled like water over it, making a network of silver on gold.
"What did you come here for?" he asked, abruptly.
"To see you!" she answered smilingly--"And to tell you that I'm 'on the
war-path' as they say, taking scalps as I go. This means that I'm
travelling about,--possibly I may go to Europe--"

"To pick up a bankrupt nobleman!" he suggested.
She laughed.
"Dear, no! Nothing quite so stupid! Neither noblemen nor bankrupts
attract me. No! I'm doing a scientific 'prowl,' like you. I believe I've
discovered something with which I could annihilate you--so!" and she
made a round O of her curved fingers and blew through it-- "One
breath!--from a distance, too! and hey presto!--the bear-man on the hills
of California eating bread and milk is gone!--a complete vanishing
trick--no more of him anywhere!" The bear-man, as she called him,
gloomed upon her with a scowl.
"You'd better leave such things alone!" he said, angrily--"Women have
no business with science."
"No, of course not!" she agreed--"Not in men's opinion. That's why
they never mention Madame Curie without the poor Monsieur! SHE
found radium and he didn't,--but 'he' is always first mentioned."
He gave an impatient gesture.
"Enough of all this!" he said--"Do you know