On his return to the Plaza Mr. Sam Gwent tried to get some conversation with Manella, but found it difficult. She did not wait on the visitors in the dining-room, and Gwent imagined he knew the reason why. Her beauty was of too brilliant and riante a type to escape the notice and admiration of men, whose open attentions were likely to be embarrassing to her, and annoying to her employers. She was therefore kept very much out of the way, serving on the upper floors, and was only seen flitting up and down the staircase or passing through the various corridors and balconies. However, when evening fell and its dark, still heat made even the hotel lounge, cooled as it was by a fountain in full play, almost unbearable, Gwent, strolling forth into the garden, found her there standing near a thick hedge of myrtle which exhaled a heavy scent as if every leaf were being crushed between invisible fingers. She looked up as she saw him approaching and smiled.
"You found your friend well?" she said.
"Very well, indeed!" replied Gwent, promptly—"In fact, I never knew he was ill!"
Manella gave her peculiar little uplift of the head which was one of her many fascinating gestures.
"He is not ill"—she said—"He only pretends! That is all! He has some reason for pretending. I think it is love!"
Gwent laughed.
"Not a bit of it! He's the last man in the world to worry himself about love!"
Manella glanced him over with quite a superior air.
"Ah, perhaps you do not know!" And she waved her hands expressively. "There was a wonderful lady came here to see him some weeks ago—she stole up the hill at night, like a spirit—a little, little fairy woman with golden hair—"
Gwent pricked up his ears and stood at attention.
"Yes? Really? You don't say so! 'A little fairy woman'? Sounds like a story!"
"She wore the most lovely clothes"—went on Manella, clasping her hands in ecstasy—"She stayed at the Plaza one night—I waited upon her. I saw her in her bed—she had skin like satin, and eyes like blue stars—her hair fell nearly to her ankles—she was like a dream! And she went up the hill by moonlight all by herself, to find HIM!"
Gwent listened with close interest.
"And I presume she found him?"
Manella nodded, and a sigh escaped her.
"Oh, yes, she found him! He told me that. And I am sure—something tells me HERE" and she pressed one hand against her heart—"by the way he spoke—that he loves her!"
"You seem to be a very observant young woman," said Gwent, smiling—"One would think you were in love with him yourself!"
She raised her large dark eyes to his with perfect frankness.
"I am!" she said—"I see no shame in that! He is a fine man—it is good to love him!"
Gwent was completely taken aback. Here was primitive passion with a vengeance!—passion which admitted its own craving without subterfuge. Manella's eyes were still uplifted in a kind of childlike confidence.
"I am happy to love him!" she went on—"I wish only to serve him. He does not love ME—oh, no!—he loves HER! But he hates her too—ah!" and she gave a little shivering movement of her shoulders—"There is no love without hate!—and when one loves and hates with the same heart-beat, THAT is a love for life and death!" She checked herself abruptly—then with a simplicity which was not without dignity added—"I am saying too much, perhaps? But you are his friend—and I think he must be very lonely up there!"
Mr. Senator Gwent was perplexed. He had not looked to stumble on a romantic episode, yet here was one ready made to his hand. His nature was ill attuned to romance of any kind, but he felt a certain compassion for this girl, so richly dowered with physical beauty, and smitten with love for a man like Roger Seaton who, according to his own account, had no belief in love's existence. And the "fairy woman" she spoke of—who could that be but Morgana Royal? After his recent interview with Seaton his thoughts were rather in a whirl, and he sought for a bit of commonplace to which he could fasten them without the risk of their drifting into greater confusion. Yet that bit of commonplace was hard to find with a woman's lovely passionate eyes looking straight into his, and the woman herself, a warm-blooded embodiment of exquisite physical beauty, framed like a picture among the scented myrtle boughs under the dusky violet sky, where glittered a few stars with that large fiery brilliance so often seen in California. He coughed—it was a convenient thing to cough—it cleared the throat and helped utterance.
"I—I—well!—I hardly think he is lonely"—he said at last, hesitatingly—"Perhaps you don't know it—but he's a very clever man—an inventor—a great thinker with new ideas—"
He stopped. How could this girl understand him? What would she know of "inventors"—and "thinkers with new ideas"? A trifle embarrassed, he looked at her. She nodded her dark head and smiled.
"I know!" she said—"He is a god!"
Sam Gwent almost jumped. A god! Oh, these women! Of what fantastic exaggerations they are capable!
"A god!" she repeated, nodding again, complacently; "He can do anything! I feel that all the time. He could rule the whole world!"
Gwent's nerves "jumped" for the second time. Roger Seaton's own words—"I'll be master of the world" knocked repeatingly on his brain with an uncomfortable thrill. He gathered up the straying threads of his common sense and twisted them into a tough string.
"That's all nonsense!" he said, as gruffly as he could—"He's not a god by any means! I'm afraid you think too much of him, Miss—Miss—er—"
"Soriso," finished Manella, gently—"Manella Soriso."
"Thank you!" and Gwent sought for a helpful cigar which he lit—"You have a very charming name! Yes—believe me, you think too much of him!"
"You say that? But—are you not his friend?"
Her tone was reproachful.
But Gwent was now nearly his normal business self again.
"No,—I am scarcely his friend"—he replied—"'Friend' is a big word,—it implies more than most men ever mean. I just know him—I've met him several times, and I know he worked for a while under Edison—and—and that's about all. Then I THINK"—he was cautious here—"I THINK I've seen him at the house of a very wealthy lady in New York—a Miss Royal—"
"Ah!" exclaimed Manella—"That is the name of the fairy woman who came here!"
Gwent went on without heeding her.
"She, too, is very clever,—she is also an inventor and a scientist—and if it was she who came here—(I daresay it was!) it was probably because she wished to ask his advice and opinion on some of the difficult things she studies—"
Manella snapped her fingers as though they were castanets.
"Ah—bah!" she exclaimed—"Not at all! No difficult thing takes a woman out by moonlight, all in soft white and diamonds to see a man!—no difficult thing at all, except to tempt him to love! Yes! That is the way it is done! I begin to learn! And you, if you are not his friend, what are you here for?"
Gwent began to feel impatient with this irrepressible "prize" beauty.
"I came to see him at his own request on business;" he answered curtly—"The business is concluded and I go away to-morrow."
Manella was silent. The low chirping of a cicada hidden in the myrtle thicket made monotonous sweetness on the stillness.
Moved by some sudden instinct which he did not attempt to explain to himself, Gwent decided to venture on a little paternal advice.
"Now don't you fly off in a rage at what I'm going to say,"—he began, slowly—"You're only a child to me—so I'm just taking the liberty of talking to you as a child. Don't give too much of your time or your thought to the man you call a 'god.' He's no more a god than I am. But I tell you one thing—he's a dangerous customer!"
Manella's great bright eyes opened wide like stars in the darkness.
"Dangerous?—How?—I do not understand—-!"
"Dangerous!"—repeated Gwent, shaking his head at her—"Not to you, perhaps,—for you probably wouldn't mind if he killed you, so long as he kissed you first! Oh, yes, I know the ways of women! God made them trusting animals, ready to slave all their lives for the sake of a caress. YOU are one of that kind—you'd willingly make a door-mat of yourself for Seaton to wipe his boots on. I don't mean that he's dangerous in that way, because though I might think him so, YOU wouldn't. No,—what I mean is that he's dangerous to himself—likely to run risks of his life—-"
Here he paused, checked by the sudden terror in the beautiful eyes that stared at him.
"His life!" and Manella's voice trembled—"You think he is here to kill himself—-"
"No, no—bless my soul, he doesn't INTEND to kill himself"—said Gwent, testily—"He's not such a fool as all that! Now look here!—try and be a sensible girl! The man is busy with an invention—a discovery—which might do him harm—I don't say it WILL—but it MIGHT. You've heard of bombs, haven't you?—timed to explode at a given moment?"
Manella nodded—her lips trembled, and she clasped her hands nervously across her bosom.
"Well!—I believe—I won't say it for certain,—that he's got something worse than that!" said Gwent, impressively—"And that's why he was chosen to live up on that hill in the 'hut of the dying' away from everybody. See? And—of course—anything may happen at any moment. He's plucky enough, and is not the sort of man to involve any other man in trouble—and that's why he stays alone. Now you know! So you can put away your romantic notions of his being 'in love'! A very good thing for him if he were! It might draw him away from his present occupation. In fact, the best that could happen to him would be that you should make him fall in love with YOU!"
She gave a little cry.
"With ME?"
"Yes, with you! Why not? Why don't you manage it? A beautiful woman like you could win the game in less than a week?"
She shook her head sorrowfully.
"You do not know him!" she said—"But—HE knows!"
"Knows what?"
She gave a despairing little gesture.
"That I love him!"
"Ah! That's a pity!" said Gwent—"Men are curious monsters in their love-appetites; they always refuse the offered dish and ask for something that isn't in the bill of fare. You should have pretended to hate him!"
"I could not pretend THAT!" said Manella, sadly—"But if I could, it would not matter. He does not want a woman."
"Oh, doesn't he?" Gwent was amused at her quaint way of putting it. "Well, he's the first man I ever heard of, that didn't! That's all bunkum, my good girl! Probably he's crying for the moon!"
"What is that?" she asked, wistfully.
"Crying for the moon? Just hankering after what can't be got. Lots of men are afflicted that way. But they've been known to give up crying and content themselves with something else."
"HE would never content himself!" she said—"If she—the woman that came here, is the moon, he will always want her. Even I want her!"
"You?" exclaimed Gwent, amazed.
"Yes! I want to see her again!" A puzzled look contracted her brows. "Since she spoke to me I have always thought of her,—I cannot get her out of my mind! She just HOLDS me—yes!—in one of her little white hands! There are few women like that I think!—women who hold the souls of others as prisoners till they choose to let them go!"
Mr. Senator Gwent was fairly nonplussed. This dark-eyed Spanish beauty with her romantic notions was almost too much for him. Had he met her in a novel he would have derided the author of the book for delineating such an impossible character,—but coming in contact with her in real life, he was at a loss what to say. Especially as he himself was quite aware of the mysterious "hold" exercised by Morgana Royal on those whom she chose to influence either near or at a distance. After a few seconds of deliberation he answered—
"Yes—I should say there are very few women of that rather uncomfortable sort of habit,—the fewer the better, in my opinion. Now Miss Manella Soriso, remember what I say to you! Don't think about being 'held' by anybody except by a lover and husband! See? Play the game! With such looks as God has given you, it should be easy! Win your 'god' away from his thunderbolts before he begins havoc with them from his miniature Olympus. If he wants the 'moon' (and possibly he doesn't!) he won't say no to a star,—it's the next best thing. Seriously now,"—and Gwent threw away the end of his cigar and laid a hand gently on her arm—"be a good girl and think over what I've said to you. Marry him if you can!—it will be the making of him!"
Manella gazed about her in the darkness, bewildered. A glittering little mob of fire-flies danced above her head like a net of jewels.
"Oh, you talk so strangely!" she said—"You forget!—I am a poor girl—I have no money—"
"Neither has he,"—and Gwent gave a short laugh. "But he could make a million dollars to-morrow—if he chose. Having only himself to consider, he DOESN'T choose! If he had YOU, he'd change his opinion. Seaton's not the man to have a wife without keeping her in comfort. I tell you again, you can be the making of him. You can save his life!"
She clasped her hands nervously. A little gasping sigh came from her lips.
"Oh!—Santa Madonna!—to save his life!"
"Ah, just that!" said Gwent impressively—"Think of it! I'm not speaking lies—that's not my way. The man is making for himself what we in the European war called a 'danger zone,' where everybody not 'in the know' was warned off hidden mines. Hidden mines! He's got them! That's so! You can take my word! It's no good looking for them, no one will ever find them but himself, and he thinks of nothing else. But if he fell in love with YOU—-"
She gave a hopeless gesture.
"He will not—he thinks nothing of me—nothing!—no!—though he says I am beautiful!"
"Oh, he says that, does he?" and Gwent smiled—"Well, he'd be a fool if he didn't!"
"Ah, but he does not care for beauty!" Manella went on. "He sees it and he smiles at it, but it does not move him!"
Gwent looked at her in perplexity, not knowing quite how to deal with the subject he himself had started. Truth to tell his nerves had been put distinctly "on edge" by Seaton's cool, calculating and seemingly callous assertion as to the powers he possessed to destroy, if he chose, a nation,—and all sorts of uncomfortable scraps of scientific information gleaned from books and treatises suggested themselves vividly to his mind at this particular moment when he would rather have forgotten them. As, for example—"A pound weight of radio-active energy, if it could be extracted in as short a time as we pleased, instead of in so many million years, could do the work of a hundred and fifty tons of dynamite." This agreeable fact stuck in his brain as a bone may stick in a throat, causing a sense of congestion. Then the words of one of the "pulpit thunderers" of New York rolled back on his ears—"This world will be destroyed, not by the hand of God, but by the wilful and devilish malingering of Man!" Another pleasant thought! And he felt himself to be a poor weak fool to even try to put up a girl's beauty, a girl's love as a barrier to the output of a destroying force engineered by a terrific human intention,—it was like the old story of the Scottish heroine who thrust a slender arm through the great staple of a door to hold back the would-be murderers of a King.
"Beauty does not move him!" she said.
She was right. Nothing was likely to move Roger Seaton from any purpose he had once resolved upon. What to him was beauty? Merely a "fortuitous concourse of atoms" moving for a time in one personality. What was a girl? Just the young "female of the species"—no more. And love? Sexual attraction, of which there was enough and too much in Seaton's opinion. And the puzzled Gwent wondered whether after all he would not have acted more wisely—or diplomatically—in accepting Seaton's proposal to part with his secret to the United States Government, even with the proviso and State pledge that it was to be "used" should occasion arise, rather than leave him to his own devices to do as he pleased with the apparently terrific potentiality of which he alone had the knowledge and the mastery. And while his thoughts thus buzzed in his head like swarming bees, Manella stood regarding him in a kind of pitiful questioning like a child with a broken toy who can not understand "why" it is broken. As he did not speak at once she took up the thread of conversation.
"You see how it is no use," she said. "No use to think of his ever loving ME! But love for HIM—ah!—that I have, and that I will ever keep in my heart!—and to save his life I would myself gladly die!"
Gwent uttered a sound between a grunt and a sigh.
"There it is! You women always run to extremes! 'Gladly die' indeed! Poor girl, why should you 'die' for him or for any man! That's sheer sentimental nonsense! There's not a man that ever lived, or that ever will live, that's worth the death of a woman! That's so! Men think too much of themselves—they've been killing women ever since they were born—it's time they stopped a bit."
Manella's beautiful eyes expressed bewilderment.
"Killing women? Is that what they do?"
"Yes, my good girl!—that is what they do! The silly trusting creatures go to them like lambs, and get their throats cut! In marriage or out of it—the throat-cutting goes on, for men are made of destructive stuff and love the sport of killing. They are never satisfied unless they can kill something—a bird, a fox or a woman. I'm a man myself and I know!"
"YOU would kill a woman?" Manella's voice was a horrified whisper.
Gwent laughed.
"No,—not I, my child! I'm too old. I've done with love-making and 'sport' of all kinds. I don't even drive a golf-ball, in make-believe that it's a woman I'm hitting as fast and far as I can. Oh, yes!—you stare!—you are wondering why, if I have such ideas, I should suggest love-making and marriage to YOU,—well, I don't actually recommend it!—but I'm rather thinking more of your 'god' than of you. You might possibly help him a bit—"
"Ah, I am not clever!" sighed Manella.
"No—you're not clever—thank God for it! But you're devoted—and devotion is sometimes more than cleverness." He paused, reflectively. "Well, I'll have to go away tomorrow—it wouldn't be any use my staying on here. In fact, I'd rather be out of the way. But I've a notion I may be able to do something for Seaton in Washington when I get back—in the meantime I'll leave a letter for you to give him—"
"You will not write of me in that letter!" interrupted the girl, hastily. "No—you must not—you could not!—-"
Gwent raised a deprecating hand.
"Don't be afraid, my girl! I'm not a cad. I wouldn't give you away for the world! I've no right to say a word about you, and I shall not. My letter will be a merely business one—you shall read it if you like—-"
"Oh no!"—she said at once, with proud frankness; "I would not doubt your word!"
Gwent gave her a comprehensively admiring glance. Even in the dusk of evening her beauty shone with the brilliance of a white flower among the dark foliage. "What a sensation she would make in New York!" he thought—"With those glorious eyes and that hair!"
And a vague regret for his lost youth moved him; he was a very wealthy man, and had he been in his prime he would have tried a matrimonial chance with this unspoilt beautiful creature,—it would have pleased him to robe her in queenly garments and to set the finest diamonds in her dark tresses, so that she should be the wonder and envy of all beholders. He answered her last remark with a kindly little nod and smile.
"Good! You needn't doubt it ever!"—he said—"If at any time you want a friend you can bet on Sam Gwent. I'm a member of Congress and you can always find me easily. But remember my advice—don't make a 'god' of any man;—he can't live up to it—-"
As he spoke a sudden jagged flash of lightning tore the sky, followed almost instantaneously by a long, low snarl of thunder rolling through the valley. Great drops of rain began to fall.
"Come along! Let us get in!" and Gwent caught Manella's hand—"Run!"
And like children they ran together through the garden into the Plaza lounge, reaching it just before a second lightning flash and peal of thunder renewed double emphasis.
"Storm!" observed a long-faced invalid man in a rocking-chair, looking at them as they hurried in.
"Yes! Storm it is!" responded Gwent, releasing the hand of his companion—"Good-night, Miss Soriso!"
She inclined her head graceful, smiling.
"Good-night, Senor!"
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