He paused, and going to the door of the hut looked out.

"Manella, there is a big cloud in the west just over the ocean. It is shaped like a great white eagle and its wings are edged with gold,--it is the beginning of a fine sunset. Come and look at it,--and while we watch it floating along I will talk to you about love!"

She hesitated,--her whole spirit was up in arms against this man whom she loved, and who, so she argued with herself, had allowed her to love HIM, while having no love for HER; and yet,--since Gwent had told her that his mysterious occupation might result in disaster and danger to his life, her devotion had received a new impetus which was wholly unselfish,--that of watchful guardianship such as inspires a faithful dog to defend its master. And, moved by this thought, she obeyed his beckoning hand, and stood with him on the sward outside the hut, looking at the cloud he described. It was singularly white,--new-fallen snow could be no whiter,--and, shaped like a huge bird, its great wings spread out to north and south were edged with a red-gold fire. Seaton pushed an old tree stump into position and sat down upon it, making Manella sit beside him.

"Now for this talk!" he said--"Love is the subject,--Love the theme! We are taught that we must love G.o.d and love our neighbor--but we don't, because we can't! In the case of G.o.d we cannot love what we don't know and don't see,--and we cannot love our neighbor because he is often a person whom we DO know and CAN see, and who is extremely offensive. Now let us consider what IS love? You, Manella, are angry because I say there is no such thing--and you accuse me of indulging in love for a woman myself. Yet--I still declare, in spite of you, there is no such thing as love! I ought to be ashamed of myself for saying this--so YOU think!--but I'm not ashamed. I know I'm right! Love is a divine idea, never realised. It is like a ninth new note in the musical scale--not to be attained. It is suggested in the highest forms of poetry and art, but the suggestion can never be carried out. What men and women call 'love' is the ordinary attraction of s.e.x,--the same attraction that pulls all male and female living things together and makes them mate.

It is very unromantic! And to a man of my mind, very useless."

She looked at him in a kind of sorrowful perplexity.

"You have much talk"--she said--"and no doubt you are clever. But I think you are all wrong!"

"You do? Wise child! Now listen to my much talk a little longer! Have you ever watched silkworms? No? They are typical examples of humanity.

A silkworm, while it is a worm, feeds to repletion,--you can never get it as many mulberry leaves as it would like to eat--then when it is gorged, it builds itself a beautiful house of silk (which is taken away from it in due course) and comes out at the door in wings!--wings it hardly uses and seems not to understand--then, if it is a female moth, it looks about for 'love' from the male. If the male 'loves' it, the female produces a considerable number of eggs like pin-heads--and then?--what then? Why she promptly dies, and there's an end of her! Her sole aim and end of being was to produce eggs, which in their turn become worms and repeat the same dull routine of business. Now--think me as brutal as you like--I say a woman is very like a female silkworm,--she comes out of her beautiful silken coc.o.o.n of maidenhood with wings which she doesn't know how to use--she merely flutters about waiting to be 'loved'--and when this dream she calls 'love' comes to her, she doesn't dream any longer--she wakes--to find her life finished!--finished, Manella!--dry as a gourd with all the juice run out!"

Manella rose from her seat beside him. The warm light in her eyes had gone--her face was pale, and as she drew herself up to her stately height she made a picture of n.o.ble scorn.

"I am sorry for you!" she said. "If you think these things your thoughts are quite dreadful! You are a cruel man after all! I am sorry I spoke of the beautiful little lady who came here to see you--you do not love her--you cannot!--I felt sure you did--but I am wrong!--there is no love in you except for yourself and your own will!"

She spoke, breathing quickly, and trembling with suppressed emotion. He smiled,--and, rising, saluted her with a profound bow.

"Thank you, Manella! You give me a true character!--Myself and my own will are certainly the chief factors in my life--and they may work wonders yet!--who knows! And there is no love in me--no!--not what YOU call love!--but--as concerns the 'beautiful little lady,' you may know this much of me--THAT _I_ WANT HER!"

He threw out his hands with a gesture that was almost tragic, and such an expression came into his face of savagery and tenderness commingled that Manella retreated from him in vague terror.

"I want her!" he repeated--"And why? Not to 'love' her,--but to break her wings,--for she, unlike a silkworm moth, knows how to use them! I want her, to make her proud mind bend to MY will and way!--I want her to show her how a man can, shall, and MUST be master of a woman's brain and soul!"

A sudden heat of pent-up feeling broke out in this impulsive rush of words;--he checked himself,--and seeing Manella's pale, scared face he went up to her and took her hand.

"You see, Manella?" he said, in quiet tones--"There is no such thing as 'love,' but there is such a thing as 'wanting.' And--for the most selfish reasons man ever had--I want HER--not you!"

The colour rushed back to her cheeks in a warm glow--her great dark eyes were ablaze with indignation. She drew her hand quickly from his hold.

"And I hope you will never get her!" she said, pa.s.sionately--"I will pray the Holy Virgin to save her from you! For you are wicked! She is like an angel--and you are a devil!--yes, surely you must be, or you could not say such horrible things! You do not want me, you say? I know that! I am a fool to have shown you my heart--you have broken it, but you do not care--you could have been master of my brain and soul whenever you pleased---"

"Ah yes, dear!" he interrupted, with a smile--"That would be so easy!"

The touch of satire in these words was lost on her,--she took them quite literally, and a sudden softness sweetened her anger.

"Yes!--quite easy!" she said--"And you would be pleased! You would do as you wished with me--men like to rule women!"

"When it is worth while!" he thought, looking at her with a curious pitifulness as one might look at a struggling animal caught in a net.

Aloud he said--

"Yes, Manella!--men like to rule women. It is their special privilege--they have enjoyed it always, even in the days when the Indian 'braves' beat their squaws out here in California, and killed them outright if they dared to complain of the beating! Women are busy just now trying to rule men--it's an experiment, but it won't do! Men are the masters of life! They expect to be obeyed by all the rest of creation. _I_ expect to be obeyed!--and so, Manella, when I tell you to go home, you must go! Yes!--love, tempers and all!--you must go!"

She met his eyes with a resolved look in her own.

"I am going!" she answered--"But I shall come again. Oh, yes! And yet again! and very often! I shall come even if it is only to find you dead on this hill--killed by your own secret! Yes--I shall come!"

He gave an involuntary movement of surprise and annoyance. Had Mr.

Senator Gwent discussed his affairs with this beautiful foolish girl who, like some forest animal, cared for nothing but the satisfaction of mating where her wishes inclined.

"What do you mean, Manella?" he demanded, imperatively--"Do you expect to find me dead?"

She nodded vehemently. Tears were in her eyes and she turned her head away that he might not see them.

"What a cheerful prospect!" he exclaimed, gaily--"And I'm to be killed by my own secret, am I? I wonder what it is! Ah, Manella, Manella! That stupid old Gwent has been at you, stuffing your mind with a lot of nonsense--don't you believe him! I've no 'secret' that will kill me--I don't want to be killed; No, Manella! Though you come 'again and yet again and ever so often' as you say, you will not find me dead! I'm too strong!"

But Manella, yielding to her inward excitement, pointed a hand at him with a warning air of a tragedy queen.

"Do not boast!" she said--"G.o.d is always listening! No man is too strong for G.o.d! I am not clever--I have no knowledge of what you do--but this I will tell you surely! You may have a secret,--or you may not have it,--but if you play with the powers of G.o.d you will be punished! Yes!--of that I am quite certain! And this I will also say--if you were to pull all the clouds down upon you and the thunders and the lightnings and all the terrible things of destruction in the world, I would be there! And you would know what love is!--Yes!"--her voice choked, and then pealed out like that of a Sybilline prophetess, "If G.o.d struck you down to h.e.l.l, I would be there!"

And with a wild, sobbing cry she rushed away from him down the hill before he could move or utter a word.

CHAPTER XVIII

A red sky burned over Egypt,--red with deep intensity of spreading fire. The slow-creeping waters of the Nile washed patches of dull crimson against the oozy mud-banks, tipping palms and swaying reeds with colour as though touched with vermilion, and here and there long stretches of wet sand gleamed with a tawny gold. All Cairo was out, inhabitants and strangers alike, strangers especially, conceiving it part of their "money's worth" never to miss a sunset,--and beyond Cairo, where the Pyramids lifted their summits aloft,--stern points of warning or menace from the past to the present and the future,--a crowd of tourists with their Arab guides were a.s.sembled, staring upward in, amazement at a white wonder in the red sky, a great air-ship, which, unlike other air-ships, was noiseless, and that moved vast wings up and down with the steady, swift rhythm of a bird's flight, as though of its own volition. It soared at an immense height so that it was quite impossible to see any pilot or pa.s.senger. It hung over the Pyramids almost motionless for three or four minutes as if about to descend, and the watching groups below made the usual alarmist prognostications of evil, taking care to look about for the safest place of shelter for themselves should the huge piece of mechanism above them suddenly escape control and take a downward dive. But apparently nothing was further from the intention of its invisible guides. Its pause above the Pyramids was brief--and almost before any of the observers had time to realise its departure it had floated away with an easy grace, silence and swiftness, miraculous to all who saw it vanish into s.p.a.ce towards the Libyan desert and beyond. The Pyramids, even the Sphinx--lost interest for the time being, every eye being strained to watch the strange aerial visitant till it disappeared. Then a babble of question and comment began in all languages among the travellers from many lands, who, though most of them were fairly well accustomed to aeroplanes, air-ships and aerial navigation as having become part of modern civilisation, found themselves nonplussed by the absolute silence and lightning swiftness of this huge bird-shaped thing that had appeared with extraordinary suddenness in the deep rose glow of the Egyptian sunset sky. Meanwhile the object of their wonder and admiration had sped many miles away, and was sailing above a desert which, from the height it had attained, looked little more than a small stretch of sand such as children play upon by the sea. Its speed gradually slackened--and its occupants, Morgana, the Marchese Rivardi and their expert mechanic, Gaspard, gazed down on the unfolding panorama below them with close and eager interest. There was nothing much to see. Every sign of humanity seemed blotted out. The red sky burning on the little stretch of sand was all.

"How small the world looks from the air!" said Morgana--"It's not worth half the fuss made about it! And yet--it's such a pretty little G.o.d's toy!"

She smiled,--and in her smiling expressed a lovely sweetness. Rivardi raised his eyes from his steering gear.

"You are not tired, Madama?" he asked.

"Tired? No, indeed! How can I be tired with so short a journey!"

"Yet we have travelled a thousand miles since we left Sicily this morning"--said Rivardi--"We have kept up the pace, have we not, Gaspard?--or rather, the 'White Eagle' has proved its speed?"

Gaspard looked up from his place at the end of the ship.

"About two hundred and fifty to three hundred miles an hour,"--he said--"One does not realise it in the movement."

"But you realise that the flight is as safe as it is quick?" said Morgana--"Do you not?"

"Madama, I confess my knowledge is outdistanced by yours,"--replied Gaspard--"I am baffled by your secret--but I freely admit its power and success."

"Good! Now let us dine!" said Morgana, opening a leather case such as is used for provisions in motoring, set plates, gla.s.ses, wine and food on the table--"A cold collation--but we'll have hot coffee to finish.

We could have dined in Cairo, but it would have been a bore! Marchese, we'll stop here, suspended in mid-air, and the stars shall be our festal lamps, vying with our own!" and she turned on a switch which illumined the whole interior of the air-ship with a soft bright radiance--"Whereabouts are we? Still over the Libyan desert?"

Rivardi consulted the chart which was spread open in his steering-cabin.

"No--I think not. We have pa.s.sed beyond it. We are over the Sahara.

Just now we can take no observations--the sunset is dying rapidly and in a few minutes it will be quite dark."