"One would think that done for effect!" he said, half aloud--"If the moon were the G.o.ddess Cynthia beloved of Endymion, as woman and G.o.ddess 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 sh.e.l.l 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 G.o.d! 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 gra.s.s or sp.a.w.ning in a stagnant pond?--that they have no power to move me to the smallest pulse of pa.s.sion or desire?--and that you, of all your s.e.x, 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 att.i.tude--"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 cla.s.sic 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 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.