The Secret Power

"Well! So you've come after all! Yesterday you said you wouldn't."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I do not wish you to starve."

"Very kind of you! But nothing can starve me."

"If you had no food--"

"I should find some"--he said--"Yes!--I should find some,--somewhere! I want very little."

He rose, stretching his arms lazily above his head,--then, stooping, he lifted the pail of milk and carried it into his cabin. Disappearing for a moment, he returned, bringing back the pail empty.

"I have enough for two days now," he said--"and longer. What you brought me at the beginning of the week has turned beautifully sour,--a 'lovely curd' as our cook at home used to say--, and with that 'lovely curd' and plenty of fruit I'm living in luxury." Here he felt in his pockets and took out a handful of coins. "That's right, isn't it?"

She counted them over as he gave them to her--bit one with her strong white teeth and nodded.

"You don't pay ME"--she said, emphatically--"It's the Plaza you pay."

"How many times will you remind me of that!" he replied, with a laugh--"Of course I know I don't pay YOU! Of course I know I pay the Plaza!--that amazing hotel and 'sanatorium' with a tropical garden and no comfort--"

"It is more comfortable than this"--she said, with a disparaging glance at his log dwelling.

"How do YOU know?" and he laughed again--"What have YOU ever experienced in the line of hotels? You are employed at the Plaza to fetch and carry;--to wait on the wretched invalids who come to California for a 'cure' of diseases incurable--"

"YOU are not an invalid!" she said with a slight accent of contempt.

"No! I only pretend to be!"

"Why do you pretend?"

"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."