't think that that
is quite the view you ought to take. Surely if Venus ever had a
daughter----"

"Oh, nonsense! After we've travelled all these millions of miles
together do you really expect me to believe stuff like that?"

"My dear girl-graduate," he said, tightening his grip round her waist a
little, "you know perfectly well that if we had travelled beyond the
limits of the Solar System, if we had outsailed old Halley's Comet
itself, and dived into the uttermost depths of Space outside the Milky
Way, you and I would still be a man and a woman, and, being, as may be
presumed, more or less in love with each other----"

"Less indeed!" said Zaidie; "you're speaking for yourself, I hope."

And then when she had partially disengaged herself and sat up straight,
she said between her laughs----

"Really, Lenox, you're quite absurd for a person who has been married as
long as you have, I don't mean in time, but in Space. Was it a thousand
years or a couple of hundred million miles ago that we were married?
Really I am getting my ideas of time and space quite mixed up.

"But never mind that! What I was going to say is that, according to all
the authorities which your girl-graduate has been reading since we left
Mars, Venus--oh, doesn't she look just gorgeous, and our old friend the
Sun behind there blazing out of darkness like one of the furnaces at
Pittsburg--I beg your pardon, Lenox, I'm afraid I'm getting quite
provincial. I suppose we're considerably more than a hundred million
miles away?"

"Yes, dear; we're about a hundred and fifty millions, and at that
distance, if you'll excuse me saying so, even the United States would
seem almost like a province, wouldn't they?"

"Well, yes; that's just where distance doesn't lend enchantment to the
view, I suppose."

"But what was it you were going to say before that----"

"The interlude, eh? Well, before the interlude you were accusing me of
being a graduate as well as a girl. Of course I can't help that, but
what I was going to say was----"

"If you are going to talk science, dear, perhaps we'd better sit on
different chairs. I may have been married for a hundred and fifty
million miles, but the honeymoon isn't half way through yet, you know."

Then there was another interlude of a few seconds' duration. When Zaidie
was seated beside her own telescope again, she said, after another
glance at the splendid crescent which, as the _Astronef_ approached at a
speed of o