Edgar Fawcett

“ To Stayne it seemed impossible that he should not rank intellectually high among those whom he had left. And his beauty—how mobile, how captivating, how unparalleled it was! When the men and women on the other island saw him, they were plainly, yet pleasurably, shocked. But the women, young and old, could not keep their eyes from his face. Stayne, while watching him, thought of Tennyson's lines:
"Liker to the inhabitant
Of some clear planet close upon the sun
Than our man's earth."
After a while the Nomad brought them both to Californian shores. Chalco was in a way changed by this time. ”

“ Remembering the rumors of his own madness and the extreme improbability of Chalco's history, this course to the young American wanderer seemed much the wisest. Meanwhile a certain idea had entered Stayne's head. They lingered only a short time in New York, after reaching it. At a supper of fashionable men and women which Stayne gave in the metropolis, and at which Chalco, with his insecure yet engaging English, took the whole company by storm, a lady of taste and social distinction murmured in his ear—
"This cousin of yours is an enchantment. I have never seen so wondrously handsome a man. ”

“ It often fills me with horror to think that I shall go to my grave and yet never know the chief charm and joy of living!"
"Answer me," exclaimed Stayne, with notes of grief and command mingling in his voice: "Can it be possible, Hortense d'Autreville, that you have never seen a man whom you could love?" ”

“ A friend at last told Stayne of the hard things that were being said of him. The informant was this time a real friend, and not, as so often happens in such cases, a foe under the guise of one. Stayne knew this, and hence felt the verity of the tidings bear in upon him with full force. At first they annoyed him excessively. Then a sense of disgust beset him, and of indifference as well. His life had grown purposeless. Nearly the most enviable man in the country, he was yet one of the least contented. ”

“ By means of a wonderful device an inhabitant of the planet Mars is landed upon the earth. A charming widow, obdurate to the pleading of all terrestrial lovers, at last becomes hopelessly enamored of this wonderful being. But, alas! he has left his heart in another world and is unable to respond. Copyright, 1891, by the Authors' Alliance.
In certain hearts love may refuse to die, and yet breed there a kind of hate. That was the way with Aubrey Stayne. His love was natural enough, and his hate could not be called unreasonable. An American by birth, he had lived many years abroad. ”

“ During the next year, while passing his time between New York and the smaller, more southerly town where he was born, Stayne not seldom deported himself in the most eccentric way. His old suavity would at times wholly leave him, and a morose curtness would take its place. Now and then he would say irrelevant things, or plunge himself into fits of silence which were the despair of his entertainers. It is true that a man of his extreme note might have behaved in a far more cavalier manner and yet received no open censure ”

“ He soon afterward sailed away for somewhere, in a magnificent steam yacht, entirely without personal companionship other than that of sailing-master and crew. His friends held this to be another mad freak, but their verdict was doubtless tinged with envy. Stayne, who passionately loved the sea, wanted to brood in its unshared company. The impulse was not unlike that of Byron; and when we recall that this young American was, in his own style, almost as handsome as the famed English singer, and that his tastes were strongly poetic, the analogy surely does not suffer. ”

“ Then Chalco, who was less beautiful (as he alleged) than countless other Martial men, and who had far less wit than they, and who did not understand the wondrous knowledge of his kinsman Golordon, fabricator of the aerial car, avowed himself ready for the daring and mystic voyage. He expected death, though they told him that Golordon was right and that his chances of reaching earth were many, and that the keen Martial telescopes had made it almost certain a race dwelt on the other planet, civilized enough to welcome him and to effect his safe return. ”

“ Only, one point is clear, is undeniable: you have been far more right than you suspected in accusing me of a great coldness. Although pity, affection, and other kindlier emotions are not foreign to my spirit, I am none the less a human creature born without the power of loving as a wife must alone love to save her marriage from being mockery and shame!"
In this final admission there seemed so much piercing sincerity that, for a long time after he had hastened from Hortense d'Autreville's presence, Stayne credited every word she had spoken ”

“ But suddenly, to his surprise and alarm, she also spoke of them, saying with lips that appeared just to move and no more:
"It is very large—is it not?—that fortune of yours?"
"Yes," he faltered, chagrined, fearing some delicate assault of that satire with which he knew that she now and then could most effectually play.
"Tell me just how large," she went on, with the faintest flicker of a smile. "I mean in francs, not dollars. Those American dollars of yours always confuse one so." ”

“ Stayne was saying. "Your marriage was a forced and loveless one; your widowhood never dealt you a pang. Since then no woman in Europe has had more suitors at her feet. Well, I am merely one of this adoring multitude. ”

“ Chalco (by which name Stayne had got to know him) declared himself to be an inhabitant of the planet Mars. For many years, he stated, that world had been desirous of holding intercourse with our own. Enormous lengths of structure had been reared from a metal of peculiar lightness and suitability for purposes of building. From this same metal had been constructed the car in which he had shot, by electric potencies not explainable here, toward our comparatively adjacent orb. Electricity in Mars had reached great heights of development. ”

“ You Frenchwomen are sometimes terribly subtle, and it may be true that I have deceived myself in dreaming you would care to link your life with my own—to share with me the fortune that I lay before you in eager gladness. ”

“ The only trouble with us, who possess power to help great masses of people in this way, is the thought of what horrible maladministration may overtake our work, after we have either bestowed it upon the people or bequeathed it to them, and what hideous charlatanism and dishonesty may hereafter balk our sincerest efforts. ”