At once he loosened his hold, and gazed moodily at her small fingers
on which two or three superb diamond circlets glittered like drops
of dew.

"Your rings!" he said--"Yes--I forgot them! Wonderful rings!--
emblems of your inordinate vanity and vulgar wealth--I forgot them!
How they sparkle in this wide moonlight, don't they? Just a drifting
of nature's refuse matter, turned into jewels for women! Strange
ordinance of strange elements! There!" and he let her hands go free-
-"They are not injured, nor are you."

She was silent pouting her under-lip like a spoilt child, and
rubbing one finger where a ring had dinted her flesh.

"So you actually think I have coma here to get away from YOU?" he
went on--"Well for once your ineffable conceit is mistaken. You
think yourself a personage of importance--but you are nothing,--less
than nothing to me, I never give you a thought--I have come here to
study--to escape from the crazy noise of modern life--the hurtling
to and fro of the masses of modern humanity,--I want to work out
certain problems which may revolutionise the world and its course of
living--"

"Why revolutionise it?" she interrupted--"Who wants it to be
revolutionised? We are all very well as we are--it's a breeding
place and a dying place--voila tout!"

She gave a French shrug of her shoulder and waved her hands
expressively. Then she pushed back her flowing hair,--the moonbeams