d the dark--and in those far-off spaces strewn with stars, we
may even hear things that no mortal has yet heard--"

"And what is the use of it all?" he suddenly demanded.

She opened her deep blue eyes in amaze.

"The use of it?... You ask the use of it?--"

"Yes--the use of it--without love!" he answered, his voice shaken with
a sudden emotion--"Madonna, forgive me!--Listen with patience for one
moment!--and think of the whole world mastered and possessed--but
without anyone to love in it--without anyone to love YOU! Suppose you
could command the elements--suppose every force that science could
bestow were yours, and yet!--no love for you--no love in yourself for
anyone--what would be the use of it all? Think, Madonna!"

She raised her delicate eyebrows in a little surprise,--a faint smile
was on her lips.

"Dear Marchese, I DO think! I HAVE thought!" she answered--"And I have
observed! Love--such as I imagined it when I was quite a young
girl--does not exist. The passion called by that name is too petty and
personal for me. Men have made love to me often--not as prettily
perhaps as you do!--but in America at least love means dollars! Yes,
truly! Any man would love my dollars, and take me with them, just
thrown in! You, perhaps--"

"I should love you if you were quite poor!" he interposed vehemently.

She laughed.

"Would you? Don't be angry if I doubt it! If I were 'quite poor' I
could not have given you your big commission here--this house would not
have been restored to its former beauty, and the White Eagle would be
still a bird of the brain and not of the air! No, you very charming
Marchese!--I should not have the same fascination for you without my
dollars!--and I may tell you that the only man I ever felt disposed to
like,--just a little,--is a kind of rude brute who despises my dollars
and me!"

His brows knitted involuntarily.

"Then there IS some man you like?" he asked, stiffly.

"I'm not sure!" she answered, lightly--"I said I felt 'disposed' to
like him! But that's only in the spirit of contradiction, because he
detests ME! And it's a sort of duel between us of sheer
intellectuality, because he is trying to discover--in the usual slow,
laborious, calculating methods of man--the very thing I HAVE
discovered! He's on the verge--But not across it!"

"And so--he may outstrip you?" And the Marchese's eyes glittered with
sudden anger--"He may claim YOUR discovery as his own?"

Morgana smiled.