The Secret Power - Page 163/209

"There must be beautiful music in the Golden City!" she said.

Don Aloysius smiled.

"There is! And when the other things of life give you pause to listen, you will often hear it!"

She smiled happily in response, and then, with a silent gesture of farewell, left the cloister and made her way to the chapel, part of which was kept open for public worship. It was empty, but the hidden organist was still playing. She went towards the High Altar and knelt in front of it. She was not of the Catholic faith,--she was truly of no faith at all save that which is taught by Science, which like a door opened in heaven shows all the wonders within,--but her keen sense of the beautiful was stirred by the solemn peace of the shut Tabernacle with the Cross above it, and the great lilies bending under their own weight of loveliness and fragrance on either side.

"It is the Symbol of a great Truth which is true for all time"--she thought, as she clasped her hands in an attitude of prayer--"And how sad and strange it is to feel that there are thousands among its best-intentioned worshippers and priests who have not discovered its mystic meaning. The God in Man, born of purity in woman! Is it only in the Golden City that they know?"

She raised her eyes in half unconscious appeal--and, as she did so, a brilliant Ray of light flashed downward from the summit of the Cross which surmounted the Altar, and remained extended slantwise towards her. She saw it,--and waited expectantly. Close to her ears a Voice spoke with extreme softness, yet very distinctly.

"Can you hear me?"

"Yes," she replied at once, with equal softness.

"Then, listen! I have a message for you!"

And Morgana listened,--listened intently,--the sapphire hue of the Ray lighting her gold hair, as she knelt, absorbed. What she heard filled her with a certain dread; and a tremor of premonition, like the darkness preceding storm, shook her nerves. But the inward spirit of her was as a warrior clothed in steel,--she was afraid of nothing--least of all of any event or incident passing for "supernatural," knowing beyond all doubt that the most seeming miraculous circumstances are all the result of natural movement and transmutation. There never had been anything surprising to her in the fact that light is a conveyor of sound; and that she was receiving a message by such means seemed no more extraordinary to her mind than receiving it by the accepted telephonic service. Every word spoken she heard with the closest attention--until--as though a cloud had suddenly covered it,--the "Sound-Ray" vanished, and the Voice ceased.