It was mid-morning, and the sun blazed down upon the hill-side with the scorching breath of a volcano. He turned into his hut,--it was a dark, cool little dwelling, comfortable enough for a single inhabitant. There was a camp-bed in one corner--and there were a couple of wicker chairs made for easy transposition into full-length couches if so required, A good sized deal table occupied the centre of the living-room,--and on the table was a clear crystal bowl full of what appeared at a first glance to be plain water, but which on closer observation showed a totally different quality. Unlike water it was never still,--some interior bubbling perpetually moved it to sway and sparkle, throwing out tiny flashes as though the smallest diamond cuttings were striving to escape from it--while it exhaled around itself an atmosphere of extreme coldness and freshness like that of ice. Seaton threw himself indolently into one of wicker chairs by the window--a window which was broad and wide, commanding a full view of distant mountains, and far away to the left a glimpse of sea.
"I am vexed, and I want to see her"--he repeated, speaking aloud to himself--"Now--WHY? Why am I vexed?--and why do I want to see her? Reason gives no answer! If she were here she would bore me to death. I could do nothing. She would ask me questions--and if I answered them she would not understand,--she is too stupid. She has no comprehension of any thing beyond simple primitive animalism. Now if it were Morgana--"
He stopped in his talk, and started as if he had been stung. Some subtle influence stole over him like the perfumed mist of incense--he leaned back in his chair and half closed his eyes. What was the stealthy, creeping magnetic power that like an invisible hand touched his brain and pulled at his memory, and forced him to see before him a small elf-like figure clad in white, with a rope of gold hair twisting, snake-like, down over its shoulders and glistening in the light of the moon? For the moment he lost his usual iron mastery of will and let himself go on the white flood of a dream. He recalled his first meeting with Morgana,--one of accident, not design--in the great laboratory of a distinguished scientist,--he had taken her for a little girl student trying to master a few principles of chemistry, and was astonished and incredulous when the distinguished scientist himself had introduced her as "one of our most brilliant theorists on the future development of radio activity." Such a description seemed altogether absurd, applied to a little fair creature with beseeching blue eyes and gold hair! They had left the laboratory together, walking some way in company and charmed with each other's conversation, then, when closer acquaintance followed, and he had learned her true position in social circles and the power she wielded owing to her vast wealth, he at once withdrew from her as much as was civilly possible, disliking the suggestion of any sordid motive for his friendship. But she had so sweetly reproached him for this, and had enticed him on--yes!--he swore it within himself,--she had enticed him on in a thousand ways,--most especially by the amazing "grip" she had of scientific problems in which he was interested and which puzzled him, but which she seemed to unravel as easily as she might unravel a skein of wool. Her clear brightness of brain and logical precision of argument first surprised him into unqualified admiration, calling to his mind the assertion of a renowned physiologist that "From the beginning woman had lived in another world than man. Formed of finer vibrations and consequently finer chemical atoms she is in touch with more subtle planes of existence and of sensation and ideation. She holds unchallenged the code of Life." Then admiration yielded to the usual under-sense of masculine resentment against feminine intellectuality, and a kind of smouldering wrath and opposition took the place of his former chivalry and the almost tender pleasure he had previously felt in her exceptional genius and ability. And there came an evening--why did he think of it now, he wondered?--when, after a brilliant summer ball given at the beautiful residence of a noted society woman on Long Island, he had taken Morgana out into their hostess's garden which sloped to the sea, and they had strolled together almost unknowingly down to the shore where, under the light of the moon, the Atlantic waves, sunken to little dainty frills of lace-like foam, broke murmuringly at their feet,--and he, turning suddenly to his companion, was all at once smitten by a sense of witchery in her looks as she stood garmented in her white, vaporous ball-gown, with diamonds in her hair and on her bosom--smitten with an overpowering lightning-stroke of passion which burnt his soul as a desert is burnt by the hot breath of the simoon, and, yielding to its force, he had caught the small, fine, fairy creature in his arms and kissed her wildly on lips and eyes and hair. And she,--she had not resisted. Then--as swiftly as he had clasped her he let her go--and stood before her in a strange spirit of defiance.