The Fever of Life
waited downstairs till it came."

"Was there no letter?" said Kaituna, in some dismay.

"No; nothing but that Telegraph."

"Oh, there maybe something marked in it," she said quietly. "Excuse me a moment while I look."

Maxwell bowed and sat watching her as she tore the cover off the paper and opened the rustling leaves. He had only known this girl a fortnight, yet within that time had contrived to fall deeply in love with her. It was not her beauty, although, man-like, he naturally admired a pretty woman. It was not her charming manner, fascinating as it was in every way. It was not her clever brain, her bright conversation, her perfect taste in dress. No. It was that indescribable something which she had about her to attract him in a greater degree than any other woman he had ever known. What that something is no man knows until he has fallen in love, and then he feels it, but cannot describe his sensations. Scientists, no doubt, would call it animal magnetism; poets would call it love; scoffers would term it sensuality. But whatever scientists, poets, or scoffers choose to call it, the thing is unnameable, indescribable, and is the necessary concomitant of a happy marriage.

It was this indescribable feeling that had sprung up suddenly between those two young people. Kaituna also felt drawn to Maxwell, but in a lesser degree, for no matter what cynics may say about the frivolity of women, they are certainly less inflammable than men. A pretty woman knows her power to attract the opposite sex, and uses it daily, mostly for amusement; therefore when her time does come to feel the genuine pangs of love, she is more able to govern and control her feelings than a man who, as a rule, simply let's himself go. So this was exactly how the case stood between these two lovers. Maxwell felt that Kaituna was the one woman in the world for him, and never attempted to suppress his passion in any way. He allowed himself to be so entirely dominated by it, that it soon became his master, and all his days and nights were given over to dreams of this beautiful dark woman from a distant isle of the sea. On the other hand, Kaituna felt that she loved him, but controlling herself with feminine dexterity, never let her infatuated lover see that his passion was responded to in any way. Had he tried to go away she would speedily have lured him back by means of those marvellous womanly arts, the trick of which no man knoweth; but the poor love-lorn wretch was so abjectly submissive that she coolly planted her conquering foot on his neck and indulged in a little catlike play 
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