The vibrating rays within dwindled by slow degrees--their light became less and less intense--their vibration less powerful,--till very gradually with a perfectly beautiful motion expressing absolute grace and lightness the vessel descended towards the aerodrome it had lately left, and all the men who were waiting for its return gave a simultaneous shout of astonishment and admiration, as it sank slowly towards them, folding its wings as it came with the quiet ease of a nesting-bird flying home.

So admirably was the distance measured between itself and the great shed of its local habitation, that it glided into place as though it had eyes to see its exact whereabouts, and came to a standstill within a few seconds of its arrival.

Morgana descended, and her two companions followed.

The other men stood silent, visibly inquisitive yet afraid to express their curiosity.

Morgana's eyes flashed over them all with a bright, half-laughing tolerance.
"I thank you, my friends!" she said--"You have done well the work I entrusted you to do under the guidance of the Marchese Rivardi, and you can now judge for yourselves the result It mystifies you I can see! You think it is a kind of 'black magic'?
Not so!--unless all our modern science is 'black magic' as well, born of the influence of those evil spirits who, as we are told in tradition, descended in rebellion from heaven and lived with the daughters of men! From these strange lovers sprang a race of giants,--symbolical I think of the birth of the sciences, which mingle in their composition the active elements of good and evil.