"To think of such a thing! Fancy ME!--giving my life into the keeping of a scientific wizard who, if he chose, could reduce me to a little heap of dust in two minutes, and no one any the wiser! Thank you! The sensational press has been pretty full lately of men's brutalities to women,--and I've no intention of adding myself to the list of victims! Men ARE brutes! They were born brutes, and brutes they will remain!" "Then you don't like him ?" persisted Lydia, moved, in spite of herself, by curiosity, and also by a vague wonder at the strange brilliancy of complexion and eyes which gave to Morgana a beauty quite unattainable by features only--"You're not set on him ?" Morgana held up a finger.
"Listen!" she said--"Isn't that a lovely valse?
Doesn't the music seem to sweep round and tie us all up in a garland of melody! How far, far above all these twirling human microbes it is!--as far as heaven from earth! If we could really obey the call of that music we should rise on wings and fly to such wonderful worlds!--as it is, we can only hop round and round like motes in a sunbeam and imagine we are enjoying ourselves for an hour or two! But the music means so much more!" She paused, enrapt;--then in a lighter tone went on--"And you think I would marry?
I would not marry an emperor if there were one worth having--which there isn't!--and as for Roger Seaton, I certainly am not 'set' on him as you so elegantly put it! And he's not 'set' on me.
We're both 'set' on something else!" She was standing near an open window as she spoke, and she looked up at the dark purple sky sprinkled with stars.

She continued slowly, and with emphasis-- "I might--possibly I might--have helped him to that something else--if I had not discovered something more!" She lifted her hand with a commanding gesture as though unconsciously,--then let it drop at her side.

Lydia Herbert looked at her perplexedly.
"You talk so very strangely!" she said.
Morgana smiled.
"Yes, I know I do!" she admitted--"I am what old Scotswomen call 'fey'! You know I was born away in the Hebrides,--my father was a poor herder of sheep at one time before he came over to the States.

I was only a baby when I was carried away from the islands of mist and rain--but I was 'fey' from my birth--" "What is fey ?" interrupted Miss Herbert.
"It's just everything that everybody else is NOT"-- Morgana replied--"'Fey' people are magic people; they see what no one else sees,--they hear voices that no one else hears--voices that whisper secrets and tell of wonders as yet undiscovered--" She broke off suddenly.

"We must not stay talking here"-- she resumed-"All the folks will say we are planning the bridesmaids' dresses and that the very day of the ceremony is fixed! But you can be sure that I am not going to marry anybody--least of all Roger Seaton!" "You like him though! I can see you like him!" "Of course I like him! He's a human magnet,--he 'draws'! You fly towards him as if he were a bit of rubbed sealing-wax and you a snippet of paper! But you soon drop off! Oh, that valse! Isn't it entrancing!" And, swinging herself round lightly like a bell-flower in a breeze she danced off alone and vanished in the crowd of her guests.
Lydia Herbert recalled this conversation now, as she stood looking from the vine-clad verandah of her hotel towards the sea, and again saw, as in a vision, the face and eyes of her "fey" friend,--a face by no means beautiful in feature, but full of a sparkling attraction which was almost irresistible.
"Nothing in her!" had declared New York society generally--"Except her money! And her hair--but not even that unless she lets it down!" Lydia had seen it so "let down," once, and only once, and the sight of such a glistening rope of gold had fairly startled her.
"All your own ?" she had gasped.
And with a twinkling smile, and comic hesitation of manner Morgana had answered.
"I--I THINK it is! It seems so! I don't believe it will come off unless you pull VERY hard!" Lydia had not pulled hard, but she had felt the soft rippling mass falling from head to far below the knee, and had silently envied the owner its possession.
"It's a great bother," Morgana declared--"I never know what to do with it.