"I must go and fix up the funeral business"--he said, "Jack has gone, and his remains must be disposed of. That's my affair. Just now his mother's crying over him,--and I can't stand that sort of thing. It gets over me."
"Then you actually HAVE a heart?" she suggested.
"I suppose so. I used to have. But it isn't the heart,--that's only a pumping muscle. I conclude it's the head."
He puffed two or three rings of smoke into the clear air.
"You know where she's gone?" he asked, suddenly.
"Morgana?"
"Yes."
Lydia Herbert hesitated.
"I THINK I know," she replied at last--"But I'm not sure."
"Well, I'M sure"--said Gwent--"She's after the special quarry that has given her the slip,--Roger Seaton. He went to California a month ago."
"Then she's in California?"
"Certain!"
Mr. Gwent took another puff at his cigar.
"You must have been in Washington when every one thought that he and she were going to make a matrimonial tie of it"--he went on--"Why, nothing else was talked of!"
She nodded.
"I know! I was there. But a man who has set his soul on science doesn't want a wife."
"And what about a woman who has set her soul in the same direction?" he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh, that's all popcorn! Morgana is not a scientist,--she's hardly a student. She just 'imagines' she can do things. But she can't."
"Well! I'm not so sure!" and Gwent looked ruminative--"She's got a smart way of settling problems while the rest of us are talking about them."
"To her own satisfaction only"--said Miss Herbert, ironically,--"Certainly not to the satisfaction of anybody else! She talks the wildest nonsense about controlling the world! Imagine it! A world controlled by Morgana!" She gave an impatient little shake of her skirts. "I do hate these sorts of mysterious, philosophising women, don't you? The old days must have been ever so much better! When it was all poetry and romance and beautiful idealism! When Dante and Beatrice were possible!"
Gwent smiled sourly.
"They never WERE possible!" he retorted--"Dante was, like all poets, a regular humbug. Any peg served to hang his stuff on,--from a child of nine to a girl of eighteen. The stupidest thing ever written is what he called his 'New Life' or 'Vita Nuova.' I read it once, and it made me pretty nigh sick. Think of all that twaddle about Beatrice 'denying him her most gracious salutation'! That any creature claiming to be a man could drivel along in such a style beats me altogether!"