Part 11 (1/2)
”Men are slow animals!” she said, lightly. ”They spend years in talking instead of in doing. Then again, when one of them really does something, all the rest are up in arms against him, and more years are wasted in trying to prove him right or wrong. I, as a mere woman, ask n.o.body for an opinion--I risk my own existence--spend my own money--and have nothing to do with governments. If I succeed I shall be sought after fast enough!--but I do not propose to either give or sell my discovery.”
”Surely you will not keep it to yourself?”
”Why not? The world is too full of inventions as it is--and it is not the least grateful to its inventors or explorers. It would make the fool of a film a three-fold millionaire--but it would leave a great scientist or a n.o.ble thinker to starve. No, no! Let It swing on its own round--I shall not enlighten it!”
She walked on, gathering a flower here and there, and he kept pace beside her.
”The men who are working here”--he at last ventured to say--”are deeply interested. You can hardly expect them not to talk among each other and in the outside clubs and meeting-places of the wonderful mechanism on which they have been engaged. They have been at it now steadily for fifteen months.”
”Do I not know it?” And she turned her head to him, smiling, ”Have I not paid their salaries regularly?--and yours? I do not care how they talk or where,--they have built the White Eagle, but they cannot make her fly!--not without ME! You were as brave as I thought you would be when you decided to fly alone, trusting to the means I gave you and which I alone can give!”
She broke off and was silent for a moment, then laying her hand lightly on his arm, she added--
”I thank you for your confidence in me! As I have said, you were brave!--you must have felt that you risked your life on a chance!--nevertheless, for once, you allowed yourself to believe in a woman!”
”Not only for once but for always would I so believe!--in SUCH a woman--if she would permit me!” he answered in a low tone of intense pa.s.sion. She smiled.
”Ah! The old story! My dear Marchese, do not fret your intellectual perception uselessly! Think what we have in store for us!--such wonders as none have yet explored,--the mysteries of the high and the low--the light and the dark--and in those far-off s.p.a.ces 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 pa.s.sion 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. She was ascending the steps of the loggia, and she paused a moment in the full glare of the Sicilian suns.h.i.+ne, her wonderful gold hair s.h.i.+ning in it with the hue of a daffodil.
”I think not!” she said--”Though of course it depends on the use he makes of it. He--like all men--wishes to destroy; I, like all women, wish to create!”