"I thank you, my friends!" she said--"You have done well the work I entrusted you to do under the guidance of the Marchese Rivardi, and you can now judge for yourselves the result It mystifies you I can see! You think it is a kind of 'black magic'? Not so!--unless all our modern science is 'black magic' as well, born of the influence of those evil spirits who, as we are told in tradition, descended in rebellion from heaven and lived with the daughters of men! From these strange lovers sprang a race of giants,--symbolical I think of the birth of the sciences, which mingle in their composition the active elements of good and evil. You have built this airship of mine on lines which have never before been attempted;--you have given it wings which are plumed like the wings of a bird, not with quills, but with channels many and minute, to carry the runlets of the 'emanation' from the substance held in the containers at either end of the vessel,--its easy flight therefore should not surprise you. Briefly--we have filled a piece of mechanism with the composition or essence of Life!--that is the only answer I can give to your enquiring looks!--let it be enough!" "But, Madama"--ventured Gaspard--"that composition or essence of Life!--what is it?" There was an instant's silence. Every man's head craned forward eagerly to hear the reply. Morgana smiled strangely. "That," she said--"is MY secret!" CHAPTER IX "And now you have attained your object, what is the use of it?" said Don Aloysius. The priest was pacing slowly up and down the old half-ruined cloister of an old half-ruined monastery, and beside his stately, black-robed figure moved the small aerial form of Morgana, clad in summer garments of pure white, her golden head uncovered to the strong Sicilian sunshine which came piercing in sword-like rays through the arches of the cloister, and filtered among the clustering leaves which hung in cool twining bunches from every crumbling grey pillar of stone. "What is the use of it?" he repeated, his calm eyes resting gravely on the little creature gliding sylph-like beside him. "Suppose your invention out-reaped every limit of known possibility--suppose your air-ship to be invulnerable, and surpassing in speed and safety everything ever experienced,--suppose it could travel to heights unimaginable, what then? Suppose even that you could alight on another star--another world than this--what purpose is served?--what peace is gained?--what happens?" Morgana stopped abruptly in her walk beside him.