Morgana smiled, and stretching out her small white hand, adorned with its sparkling rings, laid it caressingly on the girl's brown wrist.
"You are a dear!"--she murmured, lazily--"Just a dear! A big, beautiful creature with a heart! That's the trouble--your heart! You've found a man living selfishly alone, scribbling what he perhaps thinks are the most wonderful things ever put on paper, when they are very likely nothing but rubbish, and it enters into your head that he wants mothering and loving! He doesn't want anything of the sort! And YOU want to love and mother him! Oh heavens!--have you ever thought what loving and mothering mean?"
Manella drew a quick soft breath.
"All the world, surely!" she answered, with emotion--"To love!--to possess the one we love, body and soul!--and to mother a life born of such love!--THAT must be heaven!"
The smile flitted away from Morgana's lips, and her expression became almost sorrowful.
"You are like a trusting animal!" she said--"An animal all innocent of guns and steel-traps! You poor girl! I should like you to come with me out of these mountain solitudes into the world! What is your name?"
"Manella."
"Manella--what?"
"Manella Soriso"--the girl answered--"I am Spanish by both parents,--they are dead now. I was born at Monterey."
Morgana began to hum softly-"Under the walls of Monterey At dawn the bugles began to play Come forth to thy death Victor Galbraith."
She broke off,--then said-"You have not seen many men?"
"Oh, yes, I have!" and Manella tossed her head airily--"Men all more or less alike--greedy for dollars, fond of smoke and cinema women,--I do not care for them. Some have asked me to marry, but I would rather hang myself than be wife to one of them!"
Morgana slid off the edge of her bed and stood upright, her white silk nightgown falling symmetrically round her small figure. With a dexterous movement she loosened the knot into which she had twisted her hair for the night, and it fell in a sinuous coil like a golden snake from head to knee. Manella stepped back in amazement.
"Oh!" she cried--"How beautiful! I have quite as much in quantity, but it is black and heavy--ugly!--no good. And he,--that man who lives in the hut on the hill--says there is nothing he hates so much as a woman with golden hair! How can he hate such a lovely thing!"