"We?" queried Morgana, softly--"WE--of the Church?--or of the Brazen City?"
He looked at her for some moments without speaking. His tall fine figure seemed more than ever stately and imposing--and his features expressed a calm assurance and dignity of thought which gave them additional charm.
"Your question is bold!" he said--"Your enterprising spirit stops at nothing! You have learned much--you are resolved to learn more! Well,--I cannot prevent you,--nor do I see any reason why I should try! You are a resolved student,--you are also a woman:--a woman different to ordinary women and set apart from ordinary womanhood. So I say to you 'We of the Brazen City'--if you will! For more than three thousand years 'we' have existed--'we' have studied, 'we' have discovered--'we' have known. 'We,' the selected offspring of all the race that ever were born,--'we,' the pure blood of the earth,--'we,' the progenitors of the world TO BE,--'we' have lived, watching temporary civilisations rise and fall,--seeing generations born and die, because, like weeds, they have grown without any root of purpose save to smother their neighbours and destroy. 'We' remain as commanded, waiting for the full declaration and culmination of those forces which are already advancing to the end,--when the 'Kingdom' comes!"
Morgana moved close to him, and looked up at his grave, dark face beseechingly.
"Then why are you here?" she asked--"If you know,--if you were ever in the 'Brazen City' how did it happen that you left it? How could it happen?"
He smiled down into the jewel-blue of her clear eyes.
"Little child!" he said--"Brilliant soul, that rejoiced in the perception that gave you what you called 'the inside of a sun-ray,'--you, for whom the things which interest men and women of the moment are mere toys of poor invention--you, of all others, ought to know that when the laws of the universe are understood and followed, there can be no fetters on the true liberty of the subject? IF I were ever in the 'Brazen City'--mind! I say 'if'--there could be nothing to prevent my leaving it if I chose--"
She interrupted him by the uplifting of a hand.
"I was told"--she said slowly--"by a Voice that spoke to me--that if I went there I should have to stay there!"
"No doubt!" he answered--"For love would keep you!"
"Love!" she echoed.
"Even so! Such love as you have never dreamed of, dear soul weighted with millions of gold! Love!--the only force that pulls heaven to earth and binds them together!"