"Hateful?" she suggested, smilingly.
"No--the most complete and unmitigated bore!"
"Dreadful!" and she made a face at him like that of a naughty child,--then she sank down on the sun-baked turf in an easy half-reclining attitude--"It's certainly much worse to be a bore than to be hated. Hate is quite a live sentiment,--besides it always means, or HAS meant--love! You can't hate anything that is quite indifferent to you, but of course you CAN be bored! YOU are bored by me and I am bored by YOU!--and we are absolutely indifferent to each other! What a comedy it is! Isn't it?"
He stood still and sombre, gazing down at the figure resting on the ground at his feet, its white garments gathering about it as though they were sentiently aware that they must keep the line of classic beauty in every fold.
"Boredom is the trouble"--she went on--"No one escapes it. The very babies of to-day are bored. We all know too much. People used to be happy because they were ignorant--they had no sort of idea why they were born, or what they came into the world for. Now they've learned the horrid truth that they are only here just as the trees and flowers are here--to breed other trees and flowers and then go out of it--for no purpose, apparently. They are 'disillusioned.' They say 'what's the use?' To put up with so much trouble and labour for the folks coining after us whom we shall never see,--it seems perfectly foolish and futile. They used to believe in another life after this--but that hope has been knocked out of them. Besides it's quite open to question whether any of us would care to live again. Probably it might mean more boredom. There's really nothing left. That's why so many of us go reckless--it's just to escape being bored."
He listened in cold silence. After a pause-"Have 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?"