"What is all this?" he demanded, insistently--"I MUST speak to you! You have been weeping! What is troubling you?"

She drew her hands gently away from his.

"Nothing, Giulio!" and she smiled kindly--"I grieve for the griefs of others--quite uselessly!--but I cannot help it!"

"There is no hope, then?" he said.

"None--not for the man"--she replied--"His body will live,--but his brain is dead."

Rivardi gave an expressive gesture.

"Horrible! Better he should die!"

"Yes, far better! But the girl loves him. She is an ardent Spanish creature--warm-hearted and simple as a child,--she believes"--and Morgana's eyes had a pathetic wistfulness--"she believes,--as all women believe when they love for the first time,--that love has a divine power next to that of G.o.d!--that it will work miracles of recovery when all seems lost. The disillusion comes, of course, sooner or later,--but it has to come of itself--not through any other influence. She--Manella Soriso--has resolved to be his wife."

"Gran' Dio!" Rivardi started back in utter amazement--"His wife?--That girl? Young, beautiful? She will chain herself to a madman? Surely you will not allow it!"

Morgana looked at him with a smile.

"Poor Giulio!" she said, softly--"You are a most unfortunate descendant of your Roman ancestors as far as we women are concerned! You fall in love with me--and you find I am not for you!--then you see a perfectly lovely woman whom you cannot choose but admire--and a little stray thought comes flying into your head--yes!--quite involuntarily!--that perhaps--only perhaps--her love might come your way! Do not be angry, my friend!--it was only a thought that moved you when you saw her the other day--when I called you to look at her as she recovered consciousness and lay on her bed like a sleeping figure of the loveliest of pagan G.o.ddesses! What man could have seen her thus without a thrill of tenderness!--and now you have to hear that all that beauty and warmth of youthful life is to be sacrificed to a stone idol!--(for the man she worships is little more!) ah, yes!--I am sorry for you, Giulio!--but can do nothing to prevent the sacrifice,--indeed, I have promised to a.s.sist it!"

Rivardi had alternately flushed and paled while she spoke,--her keen, incisive probing of his most secret fancies puzzled and vexed him,--but with a well-a.s.sumed indifference he waved aside her delicately pointed suggestions as though he had scarcely heard them, and said--

"You have promised to a.s.sist? Can you reconcile it to your conscience to let this girl make herself a prisoner for life?"

"I can!" she answered quietly--"For if she is opposed in her desire for such imprisonment she will kill herself. So it is wisest to let her have her way. The man she loves so desperately may die at any moment, and then she will be free. But meanwhile she will have the consolation of doing all she can for him, and the hope of helping him to recover; vain hope as it may be, there is a divine unselfishness in it. For she says that if he is restored to health she will go away at once and never let him know she is his wife."

Rivardi's handsome face expressed utter incredulity.

"Will she keep her word I wonder?"

"She will!"

"Marvellous woman!" and there was bitterness in his tone--"But women are all amazing when you come to know them! In love? in hate, in good, in evil, in cleverness and in utter stupidity, they are wonderful creatures! And you, amica bella, are perhaps the most wonderful of them all! So kind and yet so cruel!"

"Cruel?" she echoed.

"Yes! To me!"

She looked at him and smiled. That smile gave such a dreamy, spiritlike sweetness to her whole personality that for the moment she seemed to float before him like an aerial vision rather than a woman of flesh and blood, and the bold desire which possessed him to seize and clasp her in his arms was checked by a sense of something like fear. Her eyes rested on his with a full clear frankness.

"If I am cruel to you, my friend"--she said, gently, "it is only to be more kind!"

She left him then and went out. He saw her small, elfin figure pa.s.s among the chains of roses which at this season seemed to tie up the garden in brilliant knots of colour, and then go down the terraces, one by one, towards the monastic retreat half buried among pine and olive, where Don Aloysius governed his little group of religious brethren.

He guessed her intent.

"She will tell him all"--he thought--"And with his strange semi-religious, semi-scientific notions, it will be easy for her to persuade him to marry the girl to this demented creature who fills the house with his shouting 'There shall be no more wars!' I should never have thought her capable of tolerating such a crime!"

He turned to leave the loggia,--but paused as he perceived Professor Ardini advancing from the interior of the house, his hands clasped behind his back and his furrowed brows bent in gloomy meditation.

"You have a difficult case?" he queried.

"More than difficult!" replied Ardini--"Beyond human skill! Perhaps not beyond the mysterious power we call G.o.d."

Rivardi shrugged his shoulders. He was a sceptic of sceptics and his modern-world experiences had convinced him that what man could not do was not to be done at all.

"The latest remedy proposed by the Signora is--love!" he said, carelessly--"The girl who is here,--Manella Soriso--has made up her mind to be the wife of this unfortunate--"

Ardini gave an expressive gesture.

"Altro! If she has made up her mind, heaven itself will not move her!

It will be a sublime sacrifice of one life for another,--what would you? Such sacrifices are common, though the world does not hear of them. In this instance there is no one to prevent it."

"You approve--you tolerate it?" exclaimed Rivardi angrily.

"I have no power to approve or to tolerate"--replied the scientist, coldly--"The matter is not one in which I have any right to interfere.

Nor,--I think,--have YOU!--I have stated such facts as exist--that the man's brain is practically destroyed--but that owing to the strength of the life-centres he will probably exist in his present condition for a full term of years. To keep him so alive will entail considerable care and expense. He will need a male nurse--probably two--food of the best and absolutely tranquil surroundings. If the Signora, who is rich and generous, guarantees these necessities, and the girl who loves him desires to be his wife under such terrible conditions, I do not see how anyone can object to the marriage."

"Then he poor devil of a man will be married without his knowledge, and probably (if he had his senses) against his will!" said Rivardi.

Ardini bent his brows yet more frowningly.

"Just so!" he answered--"But he has neither knowledge nor will--nor is he likely ever to have them again. These great attributes of the G.o.d in man have been taken from him. Power and Will!--Will and Power!--the two wings of the Soul!--they are gone, probably for ever. Science can do nothing to bring them back, but I will not deny the possibility of other forces which might work a remedy on this ruin of a 'master of the world' as he calls himself! Therefore I say let the love-woman try her best!"

CHAPTER XXVI

Don Aloysius sat in his private library,--a room little larger than a monastic cell, and at his feet knelt Morgana like a child at prayer.

The rose and purple glow of the sunset fell aslant through a high oriel window of painted gla.s.s, shedding an aureole round her golden head, and intensified the fine, dark intellectual outline of the priest's features as he listened with fixed attention to the soft pure voice, vibrating with tenderness and pity as she told him of the love that sought to sacrifice itself for love's sake only.

"In your Creed and in mine,"--she said--"there is no union which is real or binding save the Spiritual,--and this may be consummated in some way beyond our knowledge when once the sacred rite is said. You need no explanation from me,--you who are a member and future denizen of the Golden City,--you, who are set apart to live long after these poor human creatures have pa.s.sed away with the unthinking millions of the time--and you can have no hesitation to unite them as far as they CAN be united, so that they may at least be saved from the malicious tongues of an always evil-speaking world. You once asked me to tell you of the few moments of real happiness I have known,--this will be one of the keenest joys to me if I can satisfy this loving-hearted girl and aid her to carry out her self-chosen martyrdom. And you must help me!"

Gently Aloysius laid his hand on her bent head.

"It will be indeed a martyrdom!" he said, slowly, "Long and torturing!

Think well of it!--a woman, youthful and beautiful, chained to a mere breathing image of man,--a creature who cannot recognise either persons or objects, who is helpless to move, and who will remain in that pitiable state all his life, if he lives!--dear child, are you convinced there is no other way?"

"Not for her!" Morgana replied--"She has set her soul to try if G.o.d will help her to restore him,--she will surround him with the constant influence of a perfectly devoted love. Dare we say there shall be no healing power in such an influence?--we who know so much of which the world is ignorant!"

He stroked her shining hair with a careful tenderness as one might stroke the soft plumage of a bird.

"And you?" he said, in a low tone--"What of you?"

She raised her eyes to his. A light of heaven's own radiance shone in those blue orbs--an angelic peace beyond all expression.