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 conversati