The Secret Power. Marie Corelli

hut for the dying on the hill rather than at the Plaza—and how I took to you all the food you asked for, and she seemed amused—"

      "Amused?" he echoed.

      "Yes—amused. She laughed,—she looks very pretty when she laughs. And—and she seemed to fancy—"

      He lifted himself upright in a sitting posture.

      "Seemed to fancy? ... what?—"

      "That I was not bad to look at—" and Manella, gathering sudden boldness, lifted her dark eyes to his face—"She said I could tell you that she thinks me quite beautiful! Yes!—quite beautiful!"

      He smiled—a smile that was more like a sneer.

      "So you are! I've told you so, often. 'There needs no ghost come from the grave' to emphasise the fact. But she—the purring cat!—she told you to repeat her opinion to me, because—can you guess why?"

      "No!"

      "Simpleton! Because she wishes you to convey to me the message that she considers me your lover and that she admires my taste! Now she'll go back to New York full of the story! Subtle little devil! But I am not your lover, and never shall be,—not even for half an hour!"

      Manella sprang up from the turf where she had been sitting.

      "I know that!" she said, and her splendid eyes flashed proud defiance—"I know I have been a fool to let myself care for you! I do not know why I did—it was an illness! But I am well now!"

      "You are well now? Good! O let us be joyful! Keep well, Manella!—and be 'quite beautiful'—as you are! To be quite beautiful is a fine thing—not so fine as it used to be in the Greek period—still, it has its advantages! I wonder what you will do with your beauty?"

      As he spoke, he rose, stretching and shaking him self like a forest animal.

      "What will you do with it?" he repeated—"You must give it to somebody! You must transmit it to your offspring! That's the old law of nature—it's getting a bit monotonous, still it's the law! Now she—the wonderful white woman—she's all for upsetting the law! Fortunately she's not beautiful—"

      "She IS!" exclaimed Manella—"I think her so!" He looked down upon her from his superior height with a tolerant amusement.

      "Really! YOU think her so! And SHE thinks you so! Quite a mutual admiration society! And both of you obsessed by the same one man! I pity that man! The only thing for him to do is to keep out of it! No, Manella!—think as you like, she is not beautiful. You ARE beautiful. But SHE is clever, You are NOT clever. You may thank God for that! SHE is outrageously, unnaturally, cursedly clever! And her cleverness makes her see the sham of life all through; the absurdity of birth that ends in death—the freakishness of civilisation to no purpose—and she's out for something else. She wants some thing newer than sex-attraction and family life. A husband would bore her to extinction—the care of children would send her into a lunatic asylum!"

      Manella looked bewildered.

      "I cannot understand!" she said—"A woman lives for husband and children!"

      "SOME women do!" he answered—"Not all! There are a good few who don't want to stay on the animal level. Men try to keep them there—but it's a losing game nowadays. ('Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests'—but we cannot fail to see that when Mother Fox has reared her puppies she sends them off about their own business and doesn't know them any more—likewise Mother Bird does the same. Nature has no sentiment.) We have, because we cultivate artificial feelings—we imagine we 'love,' when we only want something that pleases us for the moment. To live, as you say, for husband and children would make a woman a slave—a great many women are slaves—but they are beginning to get emancipated—the woman with the gold hair, whom you so much admire, is emancipated."

      Manella gave a slight disdainful movement of her head.

      "That only means she is free to do as she likes"—she said—"To marry or not to marry—to love or not to love. I think if she loved at all, she would love very greatly. Why did she go so secretly in the evening to see you? I suppose she loves you!"

      A sudden red flush of anger coloured his brow.

      "Yes"—he answered with a kind of vindictive slowness—"I suppose she does! You, Manella, are after me as a man merely—she is after me as a Brain! You would steal my physical liberty,—she would steal my innermost thought! And you will both be disappointed! Neither my body nor my brain shall ever be dominated by any woman!"

      He turned from her abruptly and began the ascent that led to his solitary retreat. Once he looked back—

      "Don't let me see you for two days at least!" he called—"I've more than enough food to keep me going."

      He strode on, and Manella stood watching him, her tall handsome figure silhouetted against the burning sky. Her dark eyes were moist with suppressed tears of shame and suffering,—she felt herself to be wronged and slighted undeservedly. And beneath this personal emotion came now a smarting sense of jealousy, for in spite of all he had said, she felt that there was some secret between him and "the little wonderful white woman," which she could not guess and which was probably the reason of his self-sought exile and seclusion.

      "I wish now I had gone with her!" she mused—"for if I am 'quite beautiful,' as she said, she might have helped me in the world,—I might have become a lady!"

      She walked slowly and dejectedly back to the Plaza, knowing in her heart that lady or no lady, her rich beauty was useless to her, inasmuch as it made no effect on the one man she had elected to care for, unwanted and unasked. Certain physiologists teach that the law of natural selection is that the female should choose her mate, but the difficulty along this line of argument is that she may choose where her choice is unwelcome and irresponsive. Manella was a splendid type of primitive womanhood,—healthy, warm-blooded and full of hymeneal passion,—as a wife she would have been devoted,—as a mother superb in her tenderness; but, measured by modern standards of advanced and restless femininity she was a mere drudge, without the ability to think for herself or to analyse subtleties of emotion. Intellectuality had no part in her; most people's talk was for her meaningless, and she had not the patience to listen to any conversation that rose above the food and business of the day. She was confused and bewildered by everything the strange recluse on the hill said to her,—she could not follow him at all,—and yet, the purely physical attraction he exercised over her nature drew her to him like a magnet and kept her in a state of feverish craving for a love she knew she could never win. She would have gladly been his servant on the mere chance and hope that possibly in some moment of abandonment he might have yielded to the importunity of her tenderness; Adonis himself in all the freshness of his youth never exercised a more potent spell upon enamoured Venus than this plain, big bearded man over the lonely, untutored Californian girl with the large loveliness of a goddess and the soul of a little child. What was the singular fascination which like the "pull" of a magnetic storm on telegraph wires, forced a woman's tender heart under the careless foot of a rough creature as indifferent to it as to a flower he trampled in his path? Nature might explain it in some unguarded moment of self-betrayal,—but Nature is jealous of her secrets,—they have to be coaxed out of her in the slow course of centuries. And with all the coaxing, the subtle work of her woven threads between the Like and the Unlike remains an unsolved mystery.

CHAPTER VI

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      From California to Sicily is a long way. It used to be considered far longer than it is now but in these magical days of aerial and motor travelling, distance counts but little,—indeed as almost nothing to the mind of any man or woman brought up in America and therefore accustomed to "hustle." Morgana Royal had "hustled" the whole business, staying in Paris a few days only,—in Rome but two nights; and now here she was, as if she had been spirited over sea and land by supernatural power, seated in a perfect paradise-garden