r hand to him as he left
the table, "the ante-chamber to other worlds. Isn't it just lovely?
Fancy me being able to leave one world and land on another, and have you
to say just those few words which make it all possible. I wonder what
all the girls of all the civilised countries of earth would give just to
be me right now."

"They could none of them give what you gave me, Zaidie, because you see
from my point of view there's only one Zaidie in the world--or as
perhaps I ought to say just now, in the Solar System."

"Very prettily said, sir!" she laughed, when she had given him his due
reward for his courtly speech. "I am too dazed with all these wonders
about me to----"

"To reply to it? You've given me the most convincing reply possible. Now
finish your breakfast, and I'll tell you when the breathing-dresses and
the air-chamber are ready. By the way, don't forget your cameras. It's
quite possible we may find something worth taking pictures of, and you
needn't trouble much about the weight. You know, you and I and all that
we carry will only weigh about a sixth of what we did on the earth."

"Very well, then, I'll take the whole-plate apparatus as well as the
kodak and the panorama camera. When I'm ready, Murgatroyd will tell you
to come down."

"But isn't he coming with us too?"

"My dear girl, if I were to ask Murgatroyd to leave the _Astronef_
there'd be a mutiny on board--a mutiny of one against one. No, he's left
his native world; but he says he's done it in a ship that's made with
British steel out of English iron mines, smelted, forged and fashioned
in English works, and so to him it's a bit of England, however far away
from Mother Earth it may be; and if you ever see Andrew Murgatroyd's big
head and good, ungainly body outside the _Astronef_ in any of the
worlds, dead or alive, that we're going to visit--well, when we get back
to Mother Earth you may ask me----"

"I don't think I'll have to ask you for anything, Lenox. I believe if I
wanted anything you'd know before I did, so go away and get those
breathing-dresses ready. I didn't come to the moon to talk commonplaces
with a husband I've been married to for nearly three days."

"Is it really as long as that?"

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, even if you are beyond the limits of earthly
conventionalities. Anyhow, I've been married long enough to want my own
way, and just now I want a promenade on the moon."

"The will of her Ladyship is a law unto her ser