"I know!" she said--"He is a god!"
Sam Gwent almost jumped. A god! Oh, these women! Of what fantastic exaggerations they are capable!
"A god!" she repeated, nodding again, complacently; "He can do anything! I feel that all the time. He could rule the whole world!"
Gwent's nerves "jumped" for the second time. Roger Seaton's own words--"I'll be master of the world" knocked repeatingly on his brain with an uncomfortable thrill. He gathered up the straying threads of his common sense and twisted them into a tough string.
"That's all nonsense!" he said, as gruffly as he could--"He's not a god by any means! I'm afraid you think too much of him, Miss--Miss--er--"
"Soriso," finished Manella, gently--"Manella Soriso."
"Thank you!" and Gwent sought for a helpful cigar which he lit--"You have a very charming name! Yes--believe me, you think too much of him!"
"You say that? But--are you not his friend?"
Her tone was reproachful.
But Gwent was now nearly his normal business self again.
"No,--I am scarcely his friend"--he replied--"'Friend' is a big word,--it implies more than most men ever mean. I just know him--I've met him several times, and I know he worked for a while under Edison--and--and that's about all. Then I THINK"--he was cautious here--"I THINK I've seen him at the house of a very wealthy lady in New York--a Miss Royal--"
"Ah!" exclaimed Manella--"That is the name of the fairy woman who came here!"
Gwent went on without heeding her.
"She, too, is very clever,--she is also an inventor and a scientist--and if it was she who came here--(I daresay it was!) it was probably because she wished to ask his advice and opinion on some of the difficult things she studies--"
Manella snapped her fingers as though they were castanets.
"Ah--bah!" she exclaimed--"Not at all! No difficult thing takes a woman out by moonlight, all in soft white and diamonds to see a man!--no difficult thing at all, except to tempt him to love! Yes! That is the way it is done! I begin to learn! And you, if you are not his friend, what are you here for?"
Gwent began to feel impatient with this irrepressible "prize" beauty.
"I came to see him at his own request on business;" he answered curtly--"The business is concluded and I go away to-morrow."