She paused to allow the murmured exclamations of her hearers to subside,--then she went on--"You can easily understand that if atmosphere generates ONE form of energy it is capable of many other forms,--and on these lines there is nothing to be said, against the possibility of 'elementals.' I feel quite 'elemental' myself in this glorious moonlight!--just as if I could slip out of my body like a b.u.t.terfly out of a chrysalis and spread my wings!"

She lifted her fair arms upward with a kind of expansive rapture,--the moonbeams seemed to filter through the delicate tissue of her garments adding brightness to their folds and sparkling frostily on the diamonds in her hair,--and even Lady Kingswood's very placid nature was conscious of an unusual thrill, half of surprise and half of fear, at the quite "other world" appearance she thus presented.

"You have rather the look of a b.u.t.terfly!" she said, kindly--"One of those beautiful tropical things--or a fairy!--only we don't know what fairies are like as we have never seen any!"

Morgana laughed, and let her arms drop at her sides. She felt rather than saw the admiring eyes of the two men upon her and her mood changed.

"Yes--it is a lovely night,--for Sicily,"--she said. "But it would be lovelier in California!"

"In California!" echoed Rivardi--"Why California?"

"Why? Oh, I don't know why! I often think of California--it is so vast!

Sicily is a speck of garden-land compared with it--and when the moon rises full over the great hills and spreads a wide sheet of silver over the Pacific Ocean you begin to realise a something beyond ordinary nature--it helps you to get to the 'beyond' yourself if you have the will to try!"

Just then the soft slow tolling of a bell struck through the air and Don Aloysius prepared to take his leave.

"The 'beyond' calls to me from the monastery," he said, smiling--"I have been too long absent. Will you walk with me, Giulio?"

"Willingly!" and the Marchese bowed over Lady Kingswood's hand as he bade her "Good night."

"I will accompany you both to the gate,"--said Morgana, suddenly--"and then--when you are both gone I shall wander a little by myself in the light of the moon!"

Lady Kingswood looked dubiously at her, but was too tactful to offer any objection such as the "danger of catching cold" which the ordinary duenna would have suggested, and which would have seemed absurd in the warmth and softness of such a summer night. Besides, if Morgana chose to "wander by the light of the moon" who could prevent her? No one! She stepped off the loggia on to the velvety turf below with an aerial grace more characteristic of flying than walking, and glided along between the tall figures of the Marchese and Don Aloysius like a dream-spirit of the air, and Lady Kingswood, watching her as she descended the garden terraces and gradually disappeared among the trees, was impressed, as she had often been before, by a strange sense of the supernatural,--as if some being wholly unconnected with ordinary mortal happenings were visiting the world by a mere chance. She was a little ashamed of this "uncanny" feeling,--and after a few minutes'

hesitation she decided to retire within the house and to her own apartments, rightly judging that Morgana would be better pleased to find her so gone than waiting for her return like a sentinel on guard.

She gave a lingering look at the exquisite beauty of the moonlit scene, and thought with a sigh--

"What it would be if one were young once more!"

And then she turned, slowly pacing across the loggia and entering the Palazzo, where the gleam of electric lamps within rivalled the moonbeams and drew her out of sight.

Meanwhile, Morgana, between her two escorts stepped lightly along, playfully arguing with them both on their silence.

"You are so very serious, you good Padre Aloysius!" she said--"And you, Marchese--you who are generally so charming!--to-night you are a very morose companion! You are still in the dumps about my steering the 'White Eagle!'--how cross of you!"

"Madama, I think of your safety,"--he said, curtly.

"It is kind of you! But if I do not care for my safety?"

"I do!" he said, decisively.

"And I also!"--said Aloysius, earnestly--"Dear lady, be advised! Think no more of flying in the vast s.p.a.ces of air alone--alone with an enormous piece of mechanism which might fail at any moment--"

"It cannot fail unless the laws of nature fail!"--said Morgana, emphatically--"How strange it is that neither of you seems to realise that the force which moves the 'White Eagle' is natural force alone!

However--you are but men!" Here she stopped in her walk, and her brilliant eyes flashed from one to the other--"Men!--with pre-conceived ideas wedged in obstinacy!--yes!--you cannot help yourselves! Even Father Aloysius--" she paused, as she met his grave eyes fixed full upon her.

"Well!" he said gently--"What of Father Aloysius? He is 'but man' as you say!--a poor priest having nothing in common with your wealth or your self-will, my child!--one whose soul admits no other instruction than that of the Great Intelligence ruling the universe, and from whose ordinance comes forth joy or sorrow, wisdom or ignorance. We are but dust on the wind before this mighty power!--even you, with all your study and attainment are but a little phantom on the air!"

She smiled as he spoke.

"True!" she said--"And you would save this phantom from vanishing into air utterly?"

"I would!" he answered--"I would fain place you in G.o.d's keeping,"--and with a gesture infinitely tender and solemn, he made the sign of the cross above her head--"with a prayer that you may be guided out of the tangled ways of life as lived in these days, to the true realisation of happiness!"

She caught his hand and impulsively kissed it.

"You are good!--far too good!" she said--"And I am wild and wilful--forgive me! I will say good night here--we are just at the gate. Good night, Marchese! I promise you shall fly with me to the East--I will not go alone. There!--be satisfied!" And she gave him a bewitching smile--then with another markedly gentle "Good night" to Aloysius, she turned away and left them, choosing a path back to the house which was thickly overgrown with trees, so that her figure was almost immediately lost to view.

The two men looked at each other in silence.

"You will not succeed by thwarting her!"--said Aloysius, warningly.

Rivardi gave an impatient gesture.

"And you?"

"I? My son, I have no aim in view with regard to her! I should like to see her happy--she has great wealth, and great gifts of intellect and ability--but these do not make real happiness for a woman. And yet--I doubt whether she could ever be happy in the ordinary woman's way."

"No, because she is not an 'ordinary' woman," said Rivardi, quickly--"More's the pity I think--for HER!"

"And for you!" added Aloysius, meaningly.

Rivardi made no answer, and they walked on in silence, the priest parting with his companion at the gate of the monastery, and the Marchese going on to his own half-ruined villa lifting its crumbling walls out of wild verdure and suggesting the historic past, when a Caesar spent festal hours in its great gardens which were now a wilderness.

Meanwhile, Morgana, the subject of their mutual thoughts, followed the path she had taken down to the seash.o.r.e. Alone there, she stood absorbed,--a fairylike figure in her shimmering soft robe and the diamonds flashing in her hair--now looking at the moonlit water,--now back to the beautiful outline of the Palazzo d'Oro, lifted on its rocky height and surrounded by a paradise of flowers and foliage--then to the long wide structure of the huge shed where her wonderful air-ship lay, as it were, in harbour. 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 quant.i.ty 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 pa.s.sions 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?"

CHAPTER XVII

"So the man from Washington told you to bring this to me?"

Roger Seaton asked the question of Manella, twirling in his hand an unopened letter she had just given him. She nodded in the affirmative.

He looked at her critically, amused at the evident pains she had taken with her dress and general appearance. He twirled the letter again like a toy in his fingers.

"I wonder what it's all about? Do you know?"

Manella shrugged her shoulders with a charming air of indifference.