From California to Sicily is a long way. It used to be considered far longer than it is now but in these magical days of aerial and motor travelling, distance counts but little,—indeed as almost nothing to the mind of any man or woman brought up in America and therefore accustomed to "hustle." Morgana Royal had "hustled" the whole business, staying in Paris a few days only,—in Rome but two nights; and now here she was, as if she had been spirited over sea and land by supernatural power, seated in a perfect paradise-garden of flowers and looking out on the blue Mediterranean with dreamy eyes in which the lightning flash was nearly if not wholly subdued. About quarter of a mile distant, and seen through the waving tops of pines and branching oleander, stood the house to which the garden belonged,—a "restored" palace of ancient days, built of rose-marble on the classic lines of Greek architecture. Its "restoration" was not quite finished; numbers of busy workmen were employed on the facade and surrounded loggia; and now and again she turned to watch them with a touch of invisible impatience in her movement. A slight smile sweetened her mouth as she presently perceived one figure approaching her,—a lithe, dark, handsome man, who, when he drew near enough, lifted his hat with a profoundly marked reverence, and, as she extended her hand, raised it to his lips.
"A thousand welcomes, Madama!" he said, speaking in English with a scarcely noticeable foreign accent—"Last night I heard you had arrived, but could hardly believe the good fortune! You must have travelled quickly?"
"Never quickly enough for my mind!" she answered—"The whole world moves too slowly for me!"
"You must carry that complaint to the buon Dio!" he said, gaily—"Perhaps He will condescend to spin this rolling planet a little faster! But in my mind, time flies far too rapidly! I have worked—we all have worked—to get this place finished for you, yet much remains to be done—"
She interrupted him.
"The interior is quite perfect"—she said—"You have carried out my instructions more thoroughly than I imagined could be possible. It is now an abode for fairies to live in,—for poets to dream in—"
"For women to love in!" he said, with a sudden warmth in his dark eyes.
She looked at him, laughing.
"You poor Marchese!"—she said—"Still you think of love! I really believe Italians keep all the sentiment of le moyen age in their hearts,—other peoples are gradually letting it go. You are like a child believing in childish things! You imagine I could be happy with a lover—or several lovers! To moon all day and embrace all night! Oh fie! What a waste of time! And in the end nothing is so fatiguing!" She broke off a spray of flowering laurel and hit him with it playfully on the hand. "Don't moon or spoon, caro amico! What is it all about? Do I leave you nothing on which to write poetry? I find you out in Sicily—a delightful poor nobleman with a family history going back to the Caesars!—handsome, clever, with beautiful ideas—and I choose and commission you to restore and rebuild for me a fairy palace out of a half-ruined ancient one, because you have taste and skill, and I know you can do everything when money is no object—and you have done, and are doing it all perfectly. Why then spoil it by falling in love with me? Fie, fie!"
She laughed again and rising, gave him her hand.
"Hold that!" she said—"And while you hold it, tell me of my other palace—the one with wings!"
He clasped her small white fingers in his own sun-browned palm and walked beside her bare-headed.
"Ah!" And he drew a deep breath—"That is a miracle! What we called your 'impossible' plan has been made possible! But who would have thought that a woman—"
"Stop there!" she interrupted—"Do not repeat the old gander-cackle of barbaric man, who, while owing his every comfort as well as the continuance of his race, to woman, denied her every intellectual initiative! 'Who would have thought that a woman'—could do anything but bend low before a man with grovelling humility saying 'My lord, here am I, the waiting vessel of your lordship's pleasure!—possess me or I die!' We have changed that beggarly attitude!"
Her eyes flashed,—her voice rang out—the little fingers he held, stiffened resolutely in his clasp. He looked at her with a touch of anxiety.
"Pardon me!—I did not mean—" he stammered.
In a second her mood changed, and she laughed.
"No!—Of course you 'did not mean' anything, Marchese! You are naturally surprised that my 'idea' which was little more than an idea, has resolved itself into a scientific fact—but you would have been just as surprised if the conception had been that of a man instead of a woman. Only you would not have said so!"
She laughed again,—a laugh of real enjoyment,—then went on—
"Now tell me—what of my White Eagle?—what movement?—what speed?"
"Amazing!" and the Marchese lowered his voice to almost a whisper—"I hardly dare speak of it!—it is like something supernatural! We have carried out your instructions to the letter—the thing is LIVING, in all respects save life. I made the test with the fluid you gave me—I charged the cells secretly—none of the mechanics saw what I did—and when she rose in air they were terrified—"
"Brave souls!" said Morgana, and now she withdrew her hand from his grasp—"So you went up alone?"
"I did. The steering was easy—she obeyed the helm,—it was as though she were a light yacht in a sea,—wind and tide in her favour. But her speed outran every air-ship I have ever known—as also the height to which she ascends."
"We will take a trip in her to-morrow pour passer le temps"—said Morgana, "You shall choose a place for us to go. Nothing can stop us—nothing on earth or in the air!—and nothing can destroy us. I can guarantee that!"
Giulio Rivardi gazed at her wonderingly,—his dark deep Southern eyes expressed admiration with a questioning doubt commingled.
"You are very sure of yourself"—he said, gently. "Of course one cannot but marvel that your brain should have grasped in so short a time what men all over the world are still trying to discover—"
"Men are slow animals!" she said, lightly. "They spend years in talking instead of in doing. Then again, when one of them really does something, all the rest are up in arms against him, and more years are wasted in trying to prove him right or wrong. I, as a mere woman, ask nobody for an opinion—I risk my own existence—spend my own money—and have nothing to do with governments. If I succeed I shall be sought after fast enough!—but I do not propose to either give or sell my discovery."
"Surely you will not keep it to yourself?"
"Why not? The world is too full of inventions as it is—and it is not the least grateful to its inventors or explorers. It would make the fool of a film a three-fold millionaire—but it would leave a great scientist or a noble thinker to starve. No, no! Let It swing on its own round—I shall not enlighten it!"
She walked on, gathering a flower here and there, and he kept pace beside her.
"The men who are working here"—he at last ventured to say—"are deeply interested. You can hardly expect them not to talk among each other and in the outside clubs and meeting-places of the wonderful mechanism on which they have been engaged. They have been at it now steadily for fifteen months."
"Do I not know it?" And she turned her head to him, smiling, "Have I not paid their salaries regularly?—and yours? I do not care how they talk or where,—they have built the White Eagle, but they cannot make her fly!—not without ME! You were as brave as I thought you would be when you decided to fly alone, trusting to the means I gave you and which I alone can give!"
She broke off and was silent for a moment, then laying her hand lightly on his arm, she added—
"I thank you for your confidence in me! As I have said, you were brave!—you must have felt that you risked your life on a chance!—nevertheless, for once, you allowed yourself to believe in a woman!"
"Not only for once but for always would I so believe!—in SUCH a woman—if she would permit me!" he answered in a low tone of intense passion. She smiled.
"Ah! The old story! My dear Marchese, do not fret your intellectual perception uselessly! Think what we have in store for us!—such wonders as none have yet explored,—the mysteries of the high and the low—the light and the dark—and in those far-off spaces strewn with stars, we may even hear things that no mortal has yet heard—"
"And what is the use of it all?" he suddenly demanded.
She opened her deep blue eyes in amaze.
"The use of it?... You ask the use of it?—"
"Yes—the use of it—without love!" he answered, his voice shaken with a sudden emotion—"Madonna, forgive me!—Listen with patience for one moment!—and think of the whole world mastered and possessed—but without anyone to love in it—without anyone to love YOU! Suppose you could command the elements—suppose every force that science could bestow were yours, and yet!—no love for you—no love in yourself for anyone—what would be the use of it all? Think, Madonna!"
She raised her delicate eyebrows in a little surprise,—a faint smile was on her lips.
"Dear Marchese, I DO think! I HAVE thought!" she answered—"And I have observed! Love—such as I imagined it when I was quite a young girl—does not exist. The passion called by that name is too petty and personal for me. Men have made love to me often—not as prettily perhaps as you do!—but in America at least love means dollars! Yes, truly! Any man would love my dollars, and take me with them, just thrown in! You, perhaps—"
"I should love you if you were quite poor!" he interposed vehemently.
She laughed.
"Would you? Don't be angry if I doubt it! If I were 'quite poor' I could not have given you your big commission here—this house would not have been restored to its former beauty, and the White Eagle would be still a bird of the brain and not of the air! No, you very charming Marchese!—I should not have the same fascination for you without my dollars!—and I may tell you that the only man I ever felt disposed to like,—just a little,—is a kind of rude brute who despises my dollars and me!"
His brows knitted involuntarily.
"Then there IS some man you like?" he asked, stiffly.
"I'm not sure!" she answered, lightly—"I said I felt 'disposed' to like him! But that's only in the spirit of contradiction, because he detests ME! And it's a sort of duel between us of sheer intellectuality, because he is trying to discover—in the usual slow, laborious, calculating methods of man—the very thing I HAVE discovered! He's on the verge—But not across it!"
"And so—he may outstrip you?" And the Marchese's eyes glittered with sudden anger—"He may claim YOUR discovery as his own?"
Morgana smiled. She was ascending the steps of the loggia, and she paused a moment in the full glare of the Sicilian sunshine, her wonderful gold hair shining in it with the hue of a daffodil.
"I think not!" she said—"Though of course it depends on the use he makes of it. He—like all men—wishes to destroy; I, like all women, wish to create!"
One or two of the workmen who were busy polishing the rose-marble pilasters of the loggia, here saluted her—she returned their salutations with an enchanting smile.
"How delightful it all is!" she said—"I feel the real use of dollars at last! This beautiful 'palazzo,' in one of the loveliest places in the world—all the delicious flowers running down in garlands to the very shore of the sea-and liberty to enjoy life as one wishes to enjoy it, without hindrance or argument—without even the hindrance and argument of—love!" She laughed, and gave a mirthful upward glance at the Marchese's somewhat sullen countenance. "Come and have luncheon with me! You are the major-domo for the present—you have engaged the servants and you know the run of the house—you must show me everything and tell me everything! I have quite a nice chaperone—such a dear old English lady 'of title' as they say in the 'Morning Post'—so it's all quite right and proper—only she doesn't know a word of Italian and very little French. But that's quite British you know!"
She passed, smiling, into the house, and he followed.
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