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.