"Well!--I believe--I won't say it for certain,--that he's got something worse than that!" said Gwent, impressively--"And that's why he was chosen to live up on that hill in the 'hut of the dying' away from everybody. See? And--of course--anything may happen at any moment. He's plucky enough, and is not the sort of man to involve any other man in trouble--and that's why he stays alone. Now you know! So you can put away your romantic notions of his being 'in love'! A very good thing for him if he were! It might draw him away from his present occupation. In fact, the best that could happen to him would be that you should make him fall in love with YOU!" She gave a little cry. "With ME?" "Yes, with you! Why not? Why don't you manage it? A beautiful woman like you could win the game in less than a week?" She shook her head sorrowfully. "You do not know him!" she said--"But--HE knows!" "Knows what?" She gave a despairing little gesture. "That I love him!" "Ah! That's a pity!" said Gwent--"Men are curious monsters in their love-appetites; they always refuse the offered dish and ask for something that isn't in the bill of fare. You should have pretended to hate him!" "I could not pretend THAT!" said Manella, sadly--"But if I could, it would not matter. He does not want a woman." "Oh, doesn't he?" Gwent was amused at her quaint way of putting it. "Well, he's the first man I ever heard of, that didn't! That's all bunkum, my good girl! Probably he's crying for the moon!" "What is that?" she asked, wistfully. "Crying for the moon? Just hankering after what can't be got. Lots of men are afflicted that way. But they've been known to give up crying and content themselves with something else." "HE would never content himself!" she said--"If she--the woman that came here, is the moon, he will always want her. Even _I_ want her!" "You?" exclaimed Gwent, amazed. "Yes! I want to see her again!" A puzzled look contracted her brows. "Since she spoke to me I have always thought of her,--I cannot get her out of my mind! She just HOLDS me--yes!--in one of her little white hands! There are few women like that I think!--women who hold the souls of others as prisoners till they choose to let them go!" Mr. Senator Gwent was fairly nonplussed. This dark-eyed Spanish beauty with her romantic notions was almost too much for him. Had he met her in a novel he would have derided the author of the book for delineating such an impossible character,--but coming in contact with her in real life, he was at a loss what to say. Especially as he himself was quite aware of the mysterious "hold" exercised by Morgana Royal on those whom she chose to influence either near or at a distance. After a few seconds of deliberation he answered--