attempt this experiment.

"Oh," she said, clinging to his arm, "it was very wrong of me to let
you begin this. I was so dazzled by the splendour of your scheme when
I heard it, and so anxious that you should have the glory of being the
first to surpass Columbus, that I did not realize the full meaning. I
thought, also, you seemed rather ready to leave me," she added gently,
"and so said little; you do not know how it almost breaks my heart now
that I am about to lose you. It was quixotic to let you undertake this
journey."

"An undertaker would have given me his kind offices for one even
longer, had I remained here," replied Ayrault. "I cannot live in this
humdrum world without you. The most sustained excitement cannot even
palliate what seems to me like unrequited love."

"O Dick!" she exclaimed, giving him a reproachful glance, "you mustn't
say that. You know you have often told me my reason for staying and
taking my degree was good. My lot will be very much harder than yours,
for you will forget me in the excitement of discovery and adventure;
but I--what can I do in the midst of all the old associations?"

"Never mind, sweetheart," he said, kissing her hand, "I have seemed on
the verge of despair all the time."

Seeing that their separation must shortly begin, Ayrault tried to
assume a cheerful look; but as Sylvia turned her eyes away they were
suspiciously moist.

Just one minute before the starting-time Ayrault took Sylvia back to
her mother, and, after pressing her hand and having one last long look
into her--or, as he considered them, HIS--deep-sea eyes, he returned to
the Callisto, and was standing at the foot of the telescopic aluminum
ladder when his friends arrived. As all baggage and impedimenta bad
been sent aboard and properly stowed the day before, the travellers had
not to do but climb to and enter by the second-story window. It
distressed Bearwarden that the north pole's exact declination on the
21st day of December, when the axis was most inclined, could not be
figured out by the hour at which they were to start, so as to show what
change, if any, had already been brought about, but the astronomers
were working industriously, and promised that, if it were finished by
midnight, they would telegraph the result into space by flash-light
code.

Raising his hat to his fiancee and his prospective parents-in-law,
Ayrault followed them up. To draw in and fold the ladder was but the
work of