I am almost a believer in what the old-time magicians called 'elementals'-- especially now." Don Aloysius rose from his chair and put aside his emptied coffee-cup.
His tall fine figure silhouetted more densely black by the whiteness of the moon-rays had a singularly imposing effect.
"Why especially now ?" he asked, almost imperatively--"What has chanced to make you accept the idea--an old idea, older than the lost continent of Atlantis!--of creatures built up of finer life-cells than ours ?" Morgana looked at him, vaguely surprised by his tone and manner.
"Nothing has chanced that causes me any wonder," she said--"or that would 'make' me accept any theory which I could not put to the test for myself.

But, out in New York while I have been away, a fellow-student of mine--just a boy,--has found out the means of 'creating energy from some unknown source'-- that is, unknown to the scientists of rule-and-line.

They call his electric apparatus 'an atmospheric generator.' Naturally this implies that the atmosphere has something to 'generate' which has till now remained hidden and undeveloped.

I knew this long ago.

Had I NOT known it I could not have thought out the secret of the 'White Eagle'!" She paused to allow the murmured exclamations of her hearers to subside,--then she went on--"You can easily understand that if atmosphere generates ONE form of energy it is capable of many other forms,--and on these lines there is nothing to be said, against the possibility of 'elementals.' I feel quite 'elemental' myself in this glorious moonlight!--just as if I could slip out of my body like a butterfly out of a chrysalis and spread my wings!" She lifted her fair arms upward with a kind of expansive rapture,--the moonbeams seemed to filter through the delicate tissue of her garments adding brightness to their folds and sparkling frostily on the diamonds in her hair,--and even Lady Kingswood's very placid nature was conscious of an unusual thrill, half of surprise and half of fear, at the quite "other world" appearance she thus presented.
"You have rather the look of a butterfly!" she said, kindly--"One of those beautiful tropical things--or a fairy!--only we don't know what fairies are like as we have never seen any!" Morgana laughed, and let her arms drop at her sides.