has set her soul in the same direction?" he
asked.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, that's all popcorn! Morgana is not a scientist,--she's hardly a
student. She just 'imagines' she can do things. But she can't."

"Well! I'm not so sure!" and Gwent looked ruminative--"She's got a
smart way of settling problems while the rest of us are talking about
them."

"To her own satisfaction only"--said Miss Herbert,
ironically,--"Certainly not to the satisfaction of anybody else! She
talks the wildest nonsense about controlling the world! Imagine it! A
world controlled by Morgana!" She gave an impatient little shake of her
skirts. "I do hate these sorts of mysterious, philosophising women,
don't you? The old days must have been ever so much better! When it was
all poetry and romance and beautiful idealism! When Dante and Beatrice
were possible!"

Gwent smiled sourly.

"They never WERE possible!" he retorted--"Dante was, like all poets, a
regular humbug. Any peg served to hang his stuff on,--from a child of
nine to a girl of eighteen. The stupidest thing ever written is what he
called his 'New Life' or 'Vita Nuova.' I read it once, and it made me
pretty nigh sick. Think of all that twaddle about Beatrice 'denying him
her most gracious salutation'! That any creature claiming to be a man
could drivel along in such a style beats me altogether!"

"It's perfectly lovely!" declared Miss Herbert--"You've no taste in
literature, Mr. Gwent!"

"I've no taste for humbug"--he answered--"That's so! I guess I know the
difference between tragedy and comedy, even when I see them side by
side." He flicked a long burnt ash from his cigar. "I've had a bit of
comedy with you this morning--now I'm going to take up tragedy! I tell
you there's more written in Jack's dead face than in all Dante!"

"The tragedy of a lost gamble for money!" she said, with a scornful
uplift of her eyebrows.

He nodded.

"That's so! It upsets the mental balance of a man more than a lost
gamble for love!"

And he walked away.

Lydia Herbert, left to herself, played idly with the leaves of the vine
that clambered about the high wooden columns of the verandah where she
stood, admiring the sparkle of her diamond bangle which, like a thin
circlet of dewdrops, glittered on her slim wrist. Now and then she
looked far out to the sea gleaming in the burning sun, and allowed her
thoughts to wander from herself and her elegant clothes to some of the
social incident