penetration, I could do it myself. At times I shrank from encountering
her gaze, for I verily believed that she read my inmost thoughts. And I
could see that _thought came out of her eyes_, but it escaped all my
efforts to grasp it; it was too evanescent, or I was too dull. Sometimes
I imagined that the meaning was at the threshold of comprehension, but
yet it evaded me, like forgotten words whose general sense dimly
irradiates the mind, while they refuse to take a definite shape, and keep
flitting just beyond the reach of memory. Still, charity and good will
shone out so plainly that anybody could read them, and I do not know how
to express the feeling that came over me at this evidence of friendliness
exhibited by an inhabitant of a world so far from our own. It was as if a
dim sense of ultimate fraternity bound her to us. Jack's enthusiasm, as
you may guess, was without bounds, and strangely enough it rendered him
almost speechless.

"By Jo!" he kept repeating to himself in an undertone, without venturing
upon any further expression of his feelings.

Henry, as usual, was silent, but I know that he felt the influence no
less than the rest of us. Edmund, too, said nothing, but it was plain
that he was continually studying the phenomenon, and I felt sure that his
analytic mind would find a more complete explanation than we yet
possessed. Of course you are not to suppose that the power that I have
been trying to describe was peculiar to this woman. On the contrary, as I
have already intimated, it was common to all of them; but with her it
seemed to have reached a higher development, and, what was of special
interest, she alone exhibited a marked benevolence toward us.

The car was attached by a cable to the air ship that we had just quitted,
and our voyage into a new unknown began. The other air ships, which had