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A laugh, clear and cold as a sleigh-bell on a frosty night rang out on the silence

"Why did you run away from me?"

He replied at once, and brusquely

"Because I was tired of you!"

She laughed again A strange white elf as she looked In the spreading moonbeams she oman to the core, and the disdainful movement of her small uplifted head plainly expressed her utter indifference to his answer

"I followed you"--she said--"I knew I should find you! What are you doing up here? Sha to be ill?"

"Precisely! 'Sham' is as much in my line as yours I have to 'pretend' in order to be real!"

"Paradoxical as usual!" and she shrugged her shoulders--"Anyway you've chosen a good place to do your sha in It's quite lovely up here,--much better than the Plaza I am at the Plaza"

"Automobile and all I suppose!" he said, sarcastically--"How many servants?--how ain

"That's no concern of yours!" she replied--"I am my own mistress"

"More's the pity!" he retorted

They faced each other The h in clear space, shed a luminous rain of silver over all the visible breadth of wild country, and their two figures looked laher ar lad I calad!" she continued--"You are a bear- to you!"

"It says nothing because it IS nothing"--he answered, impatiently--"It is a dead planet without heart,--a mere shell of extinct volcanoes where fire once burned, and its light is but the reflection of the sun on its barren surface It is like all wo curtsy so exquisitely graceful that the action reseht wind

"Thanks, gentle Knight!--flower of chivalry!" she said--"I see you love me in spite of yourself!"

He made a quick stride towards her,--then stopped "Love you!" he echoed,--then laughed loudly and derisively-"Great God! Love you? YOU? If I did I should be mad! When will you learn the truth of me?--that wo on a blade of grass or spawning in a stagnant pond?--that they have no power to move me to the smallest pulse of passion or desire?--and that you, of all your sex, seem to my mind the most--"