"So many more things!" she repeated--"My air-ship for instance!--it's worth all the men and all the marriages I've ever heard of! My beloved 'White Eagle!'--my own creation--my baby--SUCH a baby!" She laughed. "But I must learn to fly with it alone!" "I hope you will do nothing rash!"--said Lady Kingswood, mildly; she was very ignorant of modern discovery and invention, and all attempt to explain anything of the kind to her would have been a hope less business--"I understand that it is always necessary to take a pilot and an observer in these terrible sky-machines--" She was interrupted by a gay little peal of laughter from Morgana. "Terrible?--Oh, dear 'Duchess,' you are too funny! There's nothing 'terrible' about MY 'sky-machine!' Do you ever read poetry? No?--Well then you don't know that lovely and prophetic line of Keats--" 'Beautiful things made new For the surprise of the sky-children.' "Poets are always prophetic,--that is, REAL poets, not modern verse mongers; and I fancy Keats must have imagined something in the far distant future like my 'White Eagle!' For it really IS 'a beautiful thing made new'--a beautiful natural force put to new uses--and who knows?--I may yet surprise those 'sky-children!'" Lady Kingswood's mind floundered helplessly in this flood of what, to her, was incomprehensibility. Morgana went on in the sweet fluting voice which was one of her special charms. "If you haven't read Keats, you must have read at some time or other the 'Arabian Nights' and the story of 'Sindbad the Sailor'? Yes? You think you have? Well, you know how poor Sindbad got into the Valley of Diamonds and waited for an eagle to fly down and carry him off! That's just like me! I've been dropped into a Valley of Diamonds and often wondered how I should escape--but the Eagle has arrived!" "I'm afraid I don't quite follow you"--said Lady Kingswood--"I'm rather dense, you know! Surely your Valley of Diamonds--if you mean wealth--has made your 'Eagle' possible?" Morgana nodded. "Exactly! If there had been no Valley of Diamonds there would have been no Eagle! But, all the same, this little female Sindbad is glad to get out of the valley!" Lady Kingswood laughed. "My dear child, if you are making a sort of allegory on your wealth, you are not 'out of the valley' nor are you likely to be!" Morgana sighed. "My vulgar wealth!" she murmured. "What? Vulgar?" "Yes. A man told me it was." "A vulgar man himself, I should imagine!" said Lady Kingswood, warmly. Morgana shrugged her shoulders carelessly. "Oh, no, he isn't. He's eccentric, but not vulgar. He's aristocratic to the tips of his toes--and English. That accounts for his rudeness. Sometimes, you know--only sometimes--Englishmen can be VERY rude! But I'd rather have them so--it's a sort of well-bred clumsiness, like the manners of a Newfoundland dog. It's not the 'make-a-dollar' air of American men." "You are quite English yourself, aren't you?" queried her companion.