"If an accident _should_ occur. If Carmichael cannot return--"

"I shall be much happier here than I should be on the earth. Even if I had never met Alumion I think I should come back and stay on Venus."

"It is certainly a better world, as far as we have seen, but remember your own words, 'Man was made for the earth.' Don't you think this eternal summer--these Elysian Fields--would pall upon you in course of time? Constant bliss, like everlasting honey, might cloy your earthly palate, and make you sigh for our poor, old, wicked, miserable world, that in spite of all its faults and crimes, is yet so interesting, so variable, so dramatic--so dear."

"Never. With Alumion even Hades would be an Elysium."

"Think of your friends at home, and what you owe to them; how they will miss you."

"I cannot be of much service to them. They will soon forget me."

"Perhaps you are mistaken there," said Gazen, a.s.suming a more serious air. "In any case I for one shall miss you. In fact, to speak plainly, I shall feel aggrieved--hurt. You and I are old friends, and when you asked me to join you in this expedition I was moved by friendship as well as interest. Certainly, I never dreamed that you would desert the ship. I thought it was understood that we should sink or swim together.

If you leave us I shan't answer for the consequences. I appreciate the dilemma in which you are placed, but surely friendship has a prior if a weaker claim than love-pa.s.sion. Surely you owe some allegiance to Carmichael and myself."

"What would you have me do?"

"Only to carry out the original plan of the voyage. Promise me that you will stick to the ship. Afterwards you can return to Venus and do as you please. Stanley, you know, made his greatest journey into Africa between his engagement and his marriage."

"Very well, I promise."

With an agitated mind I repaired to the tryst next evening and waited for Alumion. How should I break the news to her, and how would she receive it?

The cool airs of the water, and the glorious pageant of the sunset calmed my troubled spirit. All day the serene and beamy azure of the heavens had been plumed with snowy cloudlets of graceful and capricious form, which, as the sun sank to the horizon, were tinged with fleeting glows resembling the iris of a dove's neck, or the hues of a dying dolphin. The great luminary himself was lost in a golden glamour, and a single bright star shone palely through a rosy mist, which covered all the southern sky, like a diamond seen through a bridal veil of gauze.

That lone star was the earth.

Strange to say, I felt a kind of yearning towards it, a yearning as of home-sickness, and it seemed to reproach me for having thought of forsaking it. I wondered what my friends were doing now within that blaze; perhaps they were looking at Venus and speculating on what I was about. How delighted I should be to see them again, and show them my incomparable wife--but could I ever take her there?

Whilst I was musing, the low sweet voice of Alumion thrilled me to the marrow. I turned and saw her. She was dressed to-night in a filmy vesture of opalescent or pearly white, partly diaphanous, and having a deep fringe of gold. There was a pink blush on her cheek and a sparkle of girlish love in her celestial eyes. Never had she seemed more ravishingly beautiful.

"Beauty too rare for use, for earth too dear."

"You were gazing on the star. You did not hear my coming," she said with a little feminine pout.

"I was thinking of you, darling."

She smiled again.

"Is it not a lovely star?" she said. "We call it the star of Love--the star of the Blest."

"It is my home."

"Your home!" she exclaimed with a look of surprise and wonderment.

"You have heard that I come from another world."

"Yes, but I did not know it was a star. And is that beautiful star your home?"

"Yes, beloved; and I am sorry to say I must return there soon again."

"And I will go! You will take me with you to that fair world!"

I thought of all the crime and folly, the deceit, violence, and wretchedness lurking behind that pure and peaceful ray. Alas! how could I tell her the truth and destroy her illusions. She was innocent as a child, and an instinct warned me to keep the knowledge of evil from her, while a contrary spirit urged me to speak.

"You might not find it so fair as it looks from here."

"I am sure it cannot be an evil world since you come from it. To us it is a sacred star."

"If the inhabitants could see it as I do now, perhaps the sight would make them lead better lives--would shame them into being worthier of their dwelling-place."

"Are they not good?" she asked with a look of wonder and sorrowful compa.s.sion. "Then how unhappy they must be."

"Some are good and some are bad. Everything is mixed in our world--the strong and the weak--the rich and the poor--the happy and the miserable."

"But do the good not help the bad?"

"Yes, to a certain extent; but life is a struggle there; every man for himself; and the good very often find it hard to secure a little happiness for themselves."

"How can they be happy when they know that others are suffering and in want, that others are bad? I long to go and help them."

"Darling, you are an angel, and I adore you; but, believe me, you alone could do very little. One has already come and taught us how to love and cherish each other, that the strong should help the weak, the rich give to the poor, and the happy comfort the wretched. His followers believe that He came from Heaven, and yet after nineteen hundred years I am afraid that some of them do not fully understand the plain meaning of His words, or else find it convenient to ignore them."

"But many of us will go there. We will bring the sinful and the suffering over here to Womla and make them happy."

"I am touched by your simple faith in us, dearest It does you honour, but I fear it is mistaken. What would you say if the very people you had saved and befriended were to turn round and take your country from you, perhaps even destroy you? Such ingrat.i.tude is not unknown in our world."

"If they are so wicked they have the more need of help."

"In any case, darling, I cannot take you with me, for the vessel we came in is too small; but I will come back as soon as possible and stay with you in Womla. How happy we shall be!"

"In Womla--no. We should not be quite at rest."

"Then we shall seek out some desert star where we can live only for each other."

"You do not understand me. Neither in Womla nor in a desert star could we be happy in a selfish love, knowing that others were in pain."

"Better I had not spoken of my world at all."

"No, a thousand times no!" cried Alumion with fervour. "For you have opened up to me a new source of happiness--of blessedness which I have never known before. Only let us go together to your world and minister to the unfortunate."

"Well, darling, we will think of it; but see! the sun has set and you are free again. I came to marry you, but since I must return so soon to my own world, perhaps it would be well to postpone the ceremony until I come back here."

"Why should we do that?"

Evidently she had no idea of the dangers of the journey, or how long it would take.

"If anything should happen to me. If I should die and never return."