"But--but--you are interested in him?" Lydia suggested.
"Interested? Oh, yes! Who would not be interested in a man who says he can destroy half the world if he wants to! He assumes to be a sort of deity, you know!--Jove and his thunderbolts in the shape of a man in a badly cut suit of modern clothes! Isn't it fun!" She gave a little peal of laughter. "And every one in the room to-night thinks I am going to marry him!"
"And are you not?"
"Can you imagine it! ME, married? Lydia, Lydia, do you take me for a fool!" She laughed again--then grew suddenly serious. "To think of such a thing! Fancy ME!--giving my life into the keeping of a scientific wizard who, if he chose, could reduce me to a little heap of dust in two minutes, and no one any the wiser! Thank you! The sensational press has been pretty full lately of men's brutalities to women,--and I've no intention of adding myself to the list of victims! Men ARE brutes! They were born brutes, and brutes they will remain!"
"Then you don't like him?" persisted Lydia, moved, in spite of herself, by curiosity, and also by a vague wonder at the strange brilliancy of complexion and eyes which gave to Morgana a beauty quite unattainable by features only--"You're not set on him?"
Morgana held up a finger.
"Listen!" she said--"Isn't that a lovely valse? Doesn't the music seem to sweep round and tie us all up in a garland of melody! How far, far above all these twirling human microbes it is!--as far as heaven from earth! If we could really obey the call of that music we should rise on wings and fly to such wonderful worlds!--as it is, we can only hop round and round like motes in a sunbeam and imagine we are enjoying ourselves for an hour or two! But the music means so much more!" She paused, enrapt;--then in a lighter tone went on--"And you think I would marry? I would not marry an emperor if there were one worth having--which there isn't!--and as for Roger Seaton, I certainly am not 'set' on him as you so elegantly put it! And he's not 'set' on me. We're both 'set' on something else!"
She was standing near an open window as she spoke, and she looked up at the dark purple sky sprinkled with stars. She continued slowly, and with emphasis-"I might--possibly I might--have helped him to that something else--if I had not discovered something more!"