you done?" he said.

She looked up at him. The moonbeams set tiny frosty sparkles in her
eyes.

"Have I done?" she echoed--"No,--not quite! I love talking--and it's a
new and amusing sensation for me to talk to a man in his shirt-sleeves
on a hill in California by the light of the moon! So wild and
picturesque you know! All the men I've ever met have been dressed to
death! Have you had your dinner?"

"I never dine," he replied.

"Really! Don't you eat and drink at all?"

"I live simply,"--he said--"Bread and milk are enough for me, and I
have these."

She laughed and clapped her hands.

"Like a baby!" she exclaimed--"A big bearded baby! It's too delicious!
And you're doing all this just to get away from ME! What a compliment!"

With angry impetus he bent over her reclining figure and seized her two
hands.

"Get up!" he said harshly--"Don't lie there like a fallen angel!"

She yielded to his powerful grasp as he pulled her to her feet--then
looked at him still laughing.

"Plenty of muscle!" she said--"Well?"

He held her hands still and gripped them fiercely. She gave a little
cry.

"Don't! You forget my rings,--they hurt!"

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 s