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-passion. 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.