"He can't get over it!" she declared, smiling--"Poor Marchese Giulio! That I should have dared to steer my own air-ship was too much for him, and he can't forgive me!"

"I cannot forgive your putting yourself into danger," said Rivardi--"You ran a great risk--you must pardon me if I hold your life too valuable to be lightly lost."

"It is good of you to think it valuable,"--and her wonderful blue eyes were suddenly shadowed with sadness--"To me it is valueless."

"My dear!" exclaimed Lady Kingswood--"How can you say such a thing!"

"Only because I feel it"--replied Morgana--"I dare say my life is not more valueless than other lives--they are all without ultimate meaning. If I knew, quite positively, that I was all in all to some ONE being who would be unhappy without me,--to whom I could be helper and inspirer, I dare say I should value my life more,--but unfortunately I have seen too much of the modern world to believe in the sincerity of even that 'one' being, could I find him--or her. I am very positively alone in life,--no woman was ever more alone than I!"

"But--is not that your own fault?" suggested Don Aloysius, gently.

"Quite!" she answered, smiling--"I fully admit it. I am what they call 'difficult' I know,--I do not like 'society' or its amusements, which to me seem very vulgar and senseless,--I do not like its conversation, which I find excessively banal and often coarse--I cannot set my soul on tennis or golf or bridge--so I'm quite an 'outsider.' But I'm not sorry!--I should not care to be INside the human menagerie. Too much barking, biting, scratching, and general howling among the animals!--it wouldn't suit me!"