our hand is sensible to my touch. I implore you to remain until I
speak to you more about the sciences of your world."

In all my journey I never yielded to persuasion before. But somehow I
consented to spend a season longer of most charming fellowship, talking
of the elements in nature, their chemical affinities, and the laws of
matter and mind. Plume was unusually bright in the philosophies, and I
gathered from her many truths which had always before been hidden to me.

Finally I became rigid in my determination to leave, for I knew that I
could not stay.

"Grant me one request," she begged.

"Let me hear it."

"Promise me that you will return."

"Impossible, impossible!"

The parting that followed was indeed memorable. Without any further
notice I suddenly vanished, but still tarried invisibly in close
proximity.

Plume was now left in deep bewilderment, and I could not even
conjecture the details of her warring thoughts. Finally I saw that for
which I had tarried. Plume lifted her wings and flew skyward as
beautifully and gracefully as any bird of our earthly air.

CHAPTER XXII.

Heaven.

After my ambition to visit one thousand worlds had been realised, and I
was darting toward the confines of our own little Solar System,
instinctively I looked out once more over the vast stretches of space.
All around me, at amazing distances, loomed up the millions of spheres
which I had not visited by reason of my limited time. I felt like some
one who, after gaining his first thousand dollars, has a wild craving to
accumulate ten or one hundred thousand more.

Still I scanned the heavens while deeper longings pervaded my soul.
While in this mood the most unusual vision flashed upon my eyes.
Suddenly I forgot whither I was going and in wild astonishment I drank
in the first view of Heaven. Inwardly I marveled that I had not seen at
least a part of it before.

Heaven is fashioned on a transcendently large scale. It is not a single
sphere, but a universal chain of vast and luminous star-groups,
scattered harmoniously throughout the infinite regions of space, so that
a part of it lies suspended preciously near to our own Solar System.
Heaven is more real and substantial than the suns and planets of the
universe, although not one of its numberless parts can be detected by
the human eye, or discerned through a telescope. These luminous orbs
that constitute Heaven control the movements of the planets, suns and