She stretched out her arms with a fatigued, appealing gesture.
"I have all I want!"-- she said softly aloud,--"All!--all that money can buy--more than money has ever bought!--and yet--the unknown quantity called happiness is not in the bargain.

What is it?
Why is it?
I am like the princess in the 'Arabian Nights' who was quite satisfied with her beautiful palace till an old woman came along and told her that it wanted a roc's egg to make it perfect.

And she became at once miserable and discontented because she had not the roc's egg! I thought her a fool when I read that story in my childhood--but I am as great a fool as she to-day.

I want that roc's egg!" She laughed to herself and looked up at the splendid moon, round as a golden shield in heaven.
"How the moon shone that night in California!" she murmured--"And Roger Seaton--bear-man as he is--would have given worlds to hold me in his arms and kiss me as he did once when he 'didn't mean it!' Ah! I wonder if he ever WILL mean it! Perhaps--when it is too late!" And there swept over her mind the memory of Manella--her rich, warm, dark beauty--her frank abandonment to passions purely primitive,--and she smiled, a cold little weird smile.
"He may marry her,"-- she said--"And yet--I think not! But--if he does marry her he will never love her--as he loves ME! How we play at cross-purposes in our lives!--he is not a marrying man--I am not a marrying woman--we are both out for conquest on other lines,--and if either of us wins our way, what then?
Shall we be content to live on a triumph of power,--without love ?".