The Secret Power | Page 9

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 it's nearly ten o'clock at night?--I suppose you do know!--and the people at the Plaza--"
"THEY know!"--she interrupted, nodding sagaciously--"They know I am rich--rich--rich! It doesn't matter what I do, because I am rich! I might stay out all night with a bear-man, and nobody would say a word against me, because I am rich! I might sit on the roof of the Plaza and swing my legs over the visitors' windows and it would be called 'charming' because I am rich! I can appear at the table d'hote in a bath-wrap and eat peas with a hair-pin if I like--and my conduct will be admired, because I am rich! When I go to Europe my photo will be in all the London pictorials with the grinning chorus- girls, because I am rich! And I shall be called 'the beautiful,' 'the exquisite'--'the fascinating' by all the unwashed penny journalists because I am rich! O-ooh!" and she gave a comic little screw of her mouth and eyes--"It's great fun to be rich if you know what to do with your riches!"
"Do YOU?" he enquired, sarcastically.
"I think so!" here she put her head on one side like a meditative bird and her wonderful hair fell aslant like a golden wing--"I amuse myself--as much as I can. I learn all that can be done with greedy, stupid humanity for so much cash down! I would,"--here she paused, and with