The sun was setting in purple and gold as we approached the English coast, and although at our elevation we were still in sunshine, the twilight had begun to gather over the distant land.  The first sound we heard was the moaning of the tide along the shore, and the mournful sighing of the wind among the trees.  Hills, fields, and woods lay beneath us like a garden in miniature.  The lamps and fires of lonely villages and farmhouses twinkled like glow-worms in the dusk.  A railway train, with its white puff of smoke and lighted carriages, seemed to be crawling like a fiery caterpillar along the ground; but in a few moments we had left it far behind.  As it grew darker and darker we descended nearer to the surface.  A herd of sheep stood huddled on the grass, and stared at us; a flock of geese ran cackling into a farmyard; the watch-dog barked and tugged furiously at his chain; a little boy screamed with fright.

“That sounds homely,” said the professor to Miss Carmichael and myself, who were standing with him on the gallery outside the car.  “It’s the sweetest music I’ve heard for many a day.  Certainly Venus was a charming place, but I for one am jolly glad to get home again.”

Yes, I must confess that I too felt a deep and tranquil pleasure in returning to the familiar scenes and the beloved soil of my infancy.

“You don’t seem to care much for Venus,” said Miss Carmichael to Gazen.  “Probably if you had been born there you would have liked it better.”

“That may be.  If you would like a place, it is well to be born in it.”

“Perhaps if you are a good boy you will go to Venus when you die.”

“I’m afraid it won’t suit my mental constitution.  They don’t care for science there, and I don’t care for anything else.  Mars would fit me better, I imagine.”

“Venus is my favourite,” said Miss Carmichael.

“Well, then, it’s good enough for me,” responded Gazen.

Their talk set me thinking of Alumion, and my strange fancy that I had known her in another world.  Suddenly it occurred to me that in many of her ways and looks she bore a singular resemblance to my first love, who had died in childhood.  That was nearly seventeen years ago.  Seventeen—­it was just the age of Alumion.  Could it be possible that she and Alumion were one and the same soul?

“I should like to go back to Venus,” said Miss Carmichael.  “We can go there now at any time.”

“Of course we can,” replied Gazen; “and to Mars as well.  Your father’s invention opens up a bewildering prospect of complications in the universe.  So long as each planet was isolated, and left to manage its own affairs, the politics of the solar system were comparatively simple; but what will they be when one globe interferes with another?  Think of a German fleet of ether-ships on the prowl for a cosmical empire, bombarding Womla, and turning it into a Prussian fortress, or an emporium for cheap goods.”