The Secret Power

"It is most things!" he replied--"Without it even science is crippled. And this lady has so much of it!--it seems without end! Again,--it is seldom one meets with money and brains and beauty--all together!"

"Beauty?" Rivardi queried.

"Why, yes!--beauty that only flashes out at moments--of all beauty the most fascinating! A face that is always beautiful is fatiguing,--it is the changeful face with endless play of expression that enthralls,--or so it is to me!" And Gaspard gave an eloquent gesture--"This lady we both work for seems to have no lovers--but if she had, not one of them could ever forget her!"

Rivardi was silent.

"I should not wonder," ventured Gaspard, presently--"if--while we slept--she had seen her 'Brazen City'!"

Rivardi uttered something like an oath.

"Impossible!" he exclaimed--"She would have awakened us!"

"If she could, no doubt!" agreed Gaspard--"But if she could not, how then?"

For a moment Rivardi looked puzzled,--then he dismissed his companion's suggestion with a contemptuous shrug.

"Basta! There is no 'Brazen City'! When she heard the old tradition she was like a child with a fairy tale--a child who, reading of strawberries growing in the winter snow, goes out forthwith to find them--she did not really believe in it--but it pleased her to imagine she did. The mere sight of the arid empty desert has been enough for her."

"We certainly heard bells"--said Gaspard.

"In our brains! Such sounds often affect the nerves when flying for a long while at high speed. For all our cleverness we are only human. I have heard on the 'wireless,' sounds that do not seem of this world at all."

"So have I"--said Gaspard--"And though it may be my own brain talking, I'm not so obstinate in my own knowledge as to doubt a possible existing means of communication between one continent and another apart from OUR special 'wireless.' In fact I'm sure there is something of the kind,--though where it comes from and how it travels I cannot say. But certain people get news of occurring events somehow, from somewhere, long before it reaches Paris or London. I dare say the lady we are with could tell us something about it."

"Her powers are not limitless!" said Rivardi--"She is only a woman after all!"

Gaspard said no more, and there followed a silence,--a silence all the more tense and deep because of the amazing swiftness with which the "White Eagle" kept its steady level flight, making no sound despite the rapidity of its movement. Very gradually the darkness of night lifted, as it were, one corner of its sable curtain to show a grey peep-hole of dawn, and soon it became apparent that the ship was already far away from the mysterious land of Egypt--"The land shadowing with wings"--and was flying over the sea. There was something terrific in the complete noiselessness with which it sped through the air, and Rivardi, though now he had a good grip on his nerves, hardly dared allow himself to think of the adventurous business on which he was engaged. A certain sense of pride and triumph filled him, to realise that he had been selected from many applicants for the post he occupied--and yet with all his satisfaction there went a lurking spirit of envy and disappointed ambition. If he could win Morgana's love--if he could make the strange elfin creature with all her genius and inventive ability his own,--why then!--what then? He would share in her fame,--aye, more than share it, since it is the way of the world to give its honour to no woman whose life is connected with that of a man. The man receives the acknowledgment invariably, even if he has done nothing to deserve it, and herein is the reason why many gifted women do not marry, and prefer to stand alone in effort and achievement rather than have their hardly won renown filched from them by unjust hands. When Roger Seaton confessed to the girl Manella that his real desire was to bend and subdue Morgana's intellectuality to his own, he spoke the truth, not only for himself but for all men. Absolutely disinterested love for a brilliantly endowed woman would be difficult to find in any male nature,--men love what is inferior to themselves, not superior. Thus women who are endowed with more than common intellectual ability have to choose one of two alternatives--love, or what is called love, and child-bearing,--or fame, and lifelong loneliness.