"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!"