armichael.

"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."

"Father was talking of that very matter the other night," said Miss
Carmichael, "and he declared that rather than see any harm come to Womla
he would keep his invention a secret--at all events for a thousand years
longer."

We had glided rapidly across the Black Country, with its furnaces and
forges blazing in the darkness, and now the dull red glow of the
metropolis was visible on the horizon. Half-an-hour later we descended
in the garden of Carmichael's cottage, and found everything as snug as
when we had left it.

Leaving my fellow-travellers there, I took the train for London, and was
driven to my club, where I intended to sleep. It was a raw wet evening,
and in spite of a certain joy at being home again, I could not help
feeling that my heart was no longer here, but in another planet. After
the sublime deserts of space, and the delightful paradise of Womla, the
busy streets, the blinding glare of the lamps, the splashing vehicles,
the blatant newspaper men, the swarms of people crossing each other's
paths, and occasionally kicking each other's heels, everyone intent on
his own affairs of business or pleasure, were disenchanting, to say the
least. I seemed to have awakened from a beautiful dream, and fallen into
a dismal nightmare.

In the smoking-room of the club the first person I saw was my friend the
Viscount, who was sitting just where I had left him on the n