"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.