Manella was a splendid type of primitive womanhood,--healthy, warm-blooded and full of hymeneal passion,--as a wife she would have been devoted,--as a mother superb in her tenderness; but, measured by modern standards of advanced and restless femininity she was a mere drudge, without the ability to think for herself or to analyse subtleties of emotion.

Intellectuality had no part in her; most people's talk was for her meaningless, and she had not the patience to listen to any conversation that rose above the food and business of the day.

She was confused and bewildered by everything the strange recluse on the hill said to her,--she could not follow him at all,--and yet, the purely physical attraction he exercised over her nature drew her to him like a magnet and kept her in a state of feverish craving for a love she knew she could never win.

She would have gladly been his servant on the mere chance and hope that possibly in some moment of abandonment he might have yielded to the importunity of her tenderness; Adonis himself in all the freshness of his youth never exercised a more potent spell upon enamoured Venus than this plain, big bearded man over the lonely, untutored Californian girl with the large loveliness of a goddess and the soul of a little child.

What was the singular fascination which like the "pull" of a magnetic storm on telegraph wires, forced a woman's tender heart under the careless foot of a rough creature as indifferent to it as to a flower he trampled in his path?
Nature might explain it in some unguarded moment of self-betrayal,--but Nature is jealous of her secrets,--they have to be coaxed out of her in the slow course of centuries.