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. She felt rather than saw the admiring eyes of the two men upon her and her mood changed.
"Yes--it is a lovely night,--for Sicily,"--she said. "But it would be lovelier in California!"
"In California!" echoed Rivardi--"Why California?"
"Why? Oh, I don't know why! I often think of California--it is so vast! Sicily is a speck of garden-land compared with it--and when the moon rises full over the great hills and spreads a wide sheet of silver over the Pacific Ocean you begin to realise a something beyond ordinary nature--it helps you to get to the 'beyond' yourself if you have the will to try!"
Just then the soft slow tolling of a bell struck through the air and Don Aloysius prepared to take his leave.
"The 'beyond' calls to me from the monastery," he said, smiling--"I have been too long absent. Will you walk with me, Giulio?"
"Willingly!" and the Marchese bowed over Lady Kingswood's hand as he bade her "Good night."
"I will accompany you both to the gate,"--said Morgana, suddenly--"and then--when you are both gone I shall wander a little by myself in the light of the moon!"
Lady Kingswood looked dubiously at her, but was too tactful to offer any objection such as the "danger of catching cold" which the ordinary duenna would have suggested, and which would have seemed absurd in the warmth and softness of such a summer night. Besides, if Morgana chose to "wander by the light of the moon" who could prevent her? No one! She stepped off the loggia on to the velvety turf below with an aerial grace more characteristic of flying than walking, and glided along between the tall figures of the Marchese and Don Aloysius like a dream-spirit of the air, and Lady Kingswood, watching her as she descended the garden terraces and gradually disappeared among the trees, was impressed, as she had often been before, by a strange sense of the supernatural,--as if some being wholly unconnected with ordinary mortal happenings were visiting the world by a mere chance. She was a little ashamed of this "uncanny" feeling,--and after a few minutes' hesitation she decided to retire within the house and to her own apartments, rightly judging that Morgana would be better pleased to find her so gone than waiting for her return like a sentinel on guard. She gave a lingering look at the exquisite beauty of the moonlit scene, and thought with a sigh-"What it would be if one were young once more!"