diamond cuttings were striving to escape from it--while it exhaled
around itself an atmosphere of extreme coldness and freshness like
that of ice. Seaton threw himself indolently into one of wicker
chairs by the window--a window which was broad and wide, commanding
a full view of distant mountains, and far away to the left a glimpse
of sea.

"I am vexed, and I want to see her"--he repeated, speaking aloud to
himself--"Now--WHY? Why am I vexed?--and why do I want to see her?
Reason gives no answer! If she were here she would bore me to death.
I could do nothing. She would ask me questions--and if I answered
them she would not understand,--she is too stupid. She has no
comprehension of any thing beyond simple primitive animalism. Now if
it were Morgana--"

He stopped in his talk, and started as if he had been stung. 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