"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.