"Oh, Manella! What a question! Why do we all pretend?--all!--every
human being from the child to the dotard! Simply because we dare not
face the truth! For example, consider the sun! It is a furnace with
flames five thousand miles high, but we 'pretend' it is our
beautiful orb of day! We must pretend! If we didn't we should go
mad!"

Manella knitted her black brows perplexedly.

"I do not understand you"--she said--"Why do you talk nonsense about
the sun? I suppose you ARE ill after all,--you have an illness of
the head."

He nodded with mock solemnity.

"That's it! You're a wise woman, Manella! That's why I'm here. Not
tubercles on the lungs,--tubercles on the brain! Oh, those
tubercles! They could never stand the Plaza!--the gaiety, the
brilliancy--the--the all-too dazzling social round!. . ." he paused,
and a gleam of even white teeth under his dark moustache gave the
suggestion of a smile--"That's why I stay up here."

"You make fun of the Plaza"--said Manella, biting her lips vexedly--
"And of me, too. I am nothing to you!"

"Absolutely nothing, dear! But why should you be any thing?"

A warm flush turned her sunburnt skin to a deeper tinge.