She broke off and was silent for a moment, then laying her hand
lightly on his arm, she added--

"I thank you for your confidence in me! As I have said, you were
brave!--you must have felt that you risked your life on a chance!--
nevertheless, for once, you allowed yourself to believe in a woman!"

"Not only for once but for always would I so believe!--in SUCH a
woman--if she would permit me!" he answered in a low tone of intense
passion. She smiled.

"Ah! The old story! My dear Marchese, do not fret your intellectual
perception uselessly! Think what we have in store for us!--such
wonders as none have yet explored,--the mysteries of the high and
the low--the light and the dark--and in those far-off spaces strewn
with stars, we may even hear things that no mortal has yet heard--"

"And what is the use of it all?" he suddenly demanded.

She opened her deep blue eyes in amaze.

"The use of it?. . . You ask the use of it?--"

"Yes--the use of it--without love!" he answered, his voice shaken
with a sudden emotion--"Madonna, forgive me!--Listen with patience
for one moment!--and think of the whole world mastered and
possessed--but without anyone to love in it--without anyone to love
YOU! Suppose you could command the elements--suppose every force
that science could bestow were yours, and yet!--no love for you--no