"It's worth travelling all the long miles to see!" she declared, stretching her arms out with an enthusiastic gesture--"Oh, beautiful big moon of California! I'm glad I came!"

He was silent.

"You are not glad!" she continued--"You are a bear-man in hiding, and the moon says nothing to you!"

"It says nothing because it IS nothing"--he answered, impatiently--"It is a dead planet without heart,--a mere shell of extinct volcanoes where fire once burned, and its light is but the reflection of the sun on its barren surface. It is like all women,--but mostly like YOU!"

She made him a sweeping curtsy so exquisitely graceful that the action resembled nothing so much as the sway of a lily in a light wind.

"Thanks, gentle Knight!--flower of chivalry!" she said--"I see you love me in spite of yourself!"

He made a quick stride towards her,--then stopped. "Love you!" he echoed,--then laughed loudly and derisively-"Great God! Love you? YOU? If I did I should be mad! When will you learn the truth of me?--that women are less in my estimation than the insects crawling on a blade of grass or spawning in a stagnant pond?--that they have no power to move me to the smallest pulse of passion or desire?--and that you, of all your sex, seem to my mind the most--"