"Is it to be a long flight this time?" he asked. "Not so long as to California!" she answered--"But long enough!" With that she left him. And he betook himself to the air-shed where the superb "White Eagle" rested all a-quiver for departure, palpitating, or so it seemed to him, with a strange eagerness for movement which struck him as unusual and "uncanny" in a mere piece of mechanism. The next day moved on tranquilly. Morgana wrote many letters--and varied this occupation by occasionally sitting in the loggia to talk with Manella and Lady Kingswood, both of whom now seemed the natural inhabitants of the Palazzo d'Oro. She spoke easily of her intended air-trip,--so that they accepted her intention as a matter of course, Manella only entreating--"Do not be long away!" her lovely, eloquent eyes emphasising her appeal. Now and again the terrible cries of "There shall be no more wars! There can be none! My Great Secret! I am Master of the World!" rang through the house despite the closed doors,--cries which they feigned not to hear, though Manella winced with pain, as at a dagger thrust, each time the sounds echoed on the air. And the night came,--mildly glorious, with a full moon shining in an almost clear sky--clear save for little delicate wings of snowy cloud drifting in the east like wandering shapes of birds that haunted the domain of sunrise. Giulio Rivardi, leaning out of one of the richly sculptured window arches of his half-ruined villa, looked at the sky with pleasurable anticipation of the morrow's intended voyage in the "White Eagle." "The weather will be perfect!" he thought--"She will be pleased. And when she is pleased no woman can be more charming! She is not beautiful, like Manella--but she is something more than beautiful--she is bewitching! I wonder where she means to go!"