tung. 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 prev