The Secret Power

"And you call THIS your second experience of happiness?" said Don Aloysius, wonderingly--"What happiness did you gain by your interview with this old Alison?"

"Ah!" and Morgana smiled--"You would not understand me if I tried to explain! Everything came to me!--yes, everything! I began to live in a world of my own--" she paused, and her eyes grew dark and pensive, "and I have lived in it ever since. That is why I say my visit to old Alison was my second experience of happiness. I've seen her again many times since then, but not with quite the same impression."

"She is alive still?"

"Oh, yes! I often fancy she will never die!"

There was a silence of some minutes. Morgana rose, and crossing over to the old well, studied the crimson passion-flowers which twined about it, with almost loving scrutiny.

"How beautiful they are!" she said--"And they seem to serve no purpose save that of simple beauty!"

"That is enough for many of God's creatures"--said Aloysius--"To give joy and re-create joy is the mission of perfection."

She looked at him wistfully.

"Alas, poor me!" she sighed--"I can neither give joy nor create it!"

"Not even with all your wealth?"

"Not even with all my wealth!" she echoed. "Surely you--a priest--know what a delusion wealth really is so far as happiness goes?--mere happiness? course you can buy everything with it--and there's the trouble! When everything is bought there's nothing left! And if you try to help the poor they resent it--they think you are doing it because you are afraid of them! Perhaps the worst of all things to do is to help artists--artists of every kind!--for THEY say you want to advertise yourself as a 'generous patron'! Oh, I've tried it all and it's no use. I was just crazy to help all the scientists,--once!--but they argued and quarrelled so much as to which 'society' deserved most money that I dropped the whole offer, and started 'scientising' myself. There is one man I tried to lift out of his brain-bog,--but he would have none of me, and he is still in his bog!"

"Oh! There is one man!" said Aloysius, with a smile.

"Yes, good father!" And Morgana left the passion-flowers and moved slowly back to her seat on the stone-bench--"There is one man! He was my third and last experience of happiness. When I first met him, my whole heart gave itself in one big pulsation--but like a wave of the sea, the pulsation recoiled, and never again beat on the grim rock of human egoism!" She laughed gaily, and a delicate colour flushed her face. "But I was happy while the 'wave' lasted,--and when it broke, I still played on the shore with its pretty foam-bells."