"My dear Marchese Giulio!" she said, indulgently, "You really are a positive child in your very optimistic look-out on the world of to-day! Suppose I were to 'give them the chance,' as you suggest, to learn my secret, how do you think I should be received? I might go to the great scientific institutions of London and Paris and I might ask to be heard—I might offer to give a 'demonstration,'" here she began to laugh; "Oh dear!—it would never do for a woman to 'demonstrate' and terrify all the male professors, would it! No!—well, I should probably have to wait months before being 'heard,'—then I should probably meet with the chill repudiation dealt out to that wonderful Hindu scientist, Jagadis Bose, by Burdon Sanderson when the brilliant Indian savant tried to teach men what they never knew before about the life of plants. Not only that, I should be met with incredulity and ridicule—'a woman! a WOMAN dares to assume knowledge superior to ours!' and so forth. No, no! Let the wise men try their steam air-ships and spoil the skies by smoke and vapour, so that agriculture becomes more and more difficult, and sunshine an almost forgotten benediction!—let them go their own foolish way till they learn wisdom of themselves—no one could ever teach them what they refuse to learn, till they tumble into a bog or quicksand of dilemma and have to be forcibly dragged out."
"By a woman?" hinted Don Aloysius, with a smile.
She shrugged her shoulders carelessly.
"Very often! Marja Sklodowska Curie, for example, has pulled many scientists out of the mud, but they are not grateful enough to acknowledge it. One of the greatest women of the age, she is allowed to remain in comparative obscurity,—even Anatole France, though he called her a 'genius,' had not the generosity or largeness of mind to praise her as she deserves. Though, of course, like all really great souls she is indifferent to praise or blame—the notice of the decadent press, noisy and vulgar like the beating of the cheap-jack's drum at a country fair, has no attraction for her. Nothing is known of her private life,—not a photograph of her is obtainable—she has the lovely dignity of complete reserve. She is one of my heroines in this life—she does not offer herself to the cheap journalist like a milliner's mannequin or a film face. She will not give herself away—neither will I!"
"But you might benefit the human race"—said Rivardi—"Would not that thought weigh with you?"
"Not in the least!"—and she smiled—"The human race in its present condition is 'an unweeded garden, things rank and gross in nature possess it merely,' and it wants clearing. I have no wish to benefit it. It has always murdered its benefactors. It deludes itself with the idea that the universe is for IT alone,—it ignores the fact that there are many other sharers in its privileges and surroundings—presences and personalities as real as itself. I am almost a believer in what the old-time magicians called 'elementals'—especially now."
Don Aloysius rose from his chair and put aside his emptied coffee-cup. His tall fine figure silhouetted more densely black by the whiteness of the moon-rays had a singularly imposing effect.
"Why especially now?" he asked, almost imperatively—"What has chanced to make you accept the idea—an old idea, older than the lost continent of Atlantis!—of creatures built up of finer life-cells than ours?"
Morgana looked at him, vaguely surprised by his tone and manner.
"Nothing has chanced that causes me any wonder," she said—"or that would 'make' me accept any theory which I could not put to the test for myself. But, out in New York while I have been away, a fellow-student of mine—just a boy,—has found out the means of 'creating energy from some unknown source'—that is, unknown to the scientists of rule-and-line. They call his electric apparatus 'an atmospheric generator.' Naturally this implies that the atmosphere has something to 'generate' which has till now remained hidden and undeveloped. I knew this long ago. Had I NOT known it I could not have thought out the secret of the 'White Eagle'!"