ver forty miles a second, increased in size and distinctness
every moment:

"What I mean is this. All the authorities are agreed that on Venus, her
axis of revolution being so very much inclined to the plane of her
orbit, the seasons are so severe that half the year its temperate zone
and its tropics have a summer about twice as hot as ours and the other
half they have a winter twice as cold as our coldest. I'm afraid, after
all, we shall find the Love-Star a world of salamanders and seals;
things that can live in a furnace and bask on an iceberg; and when we
get back home it will be our painful duty, as the first explorers of the
fields of Space, to dispel another dearly-cherished popular delusion."

"I'm not so very sure about that," said Lenox, glancing from the rapidly
growing crescent, to the sweet, smiling face beside him. "Don't you see
something very different there to what we saw either on the Moon or
Mars? Now just go back to your telescope and let us take an
observation."

"Well," said Zaidie, rising, "as our trip is, partly at least, in the
interests of science, I will;" and then when she had got her own
telescope into focus again--for the distance between the _Astronef_ and
the new world they were about to visit was rapidly lessening--she took a
long look through it, and said:

"Yes, I think I see what you mean. The outer edge of the crescent is
bright, but it gets greyer and dimmer towards the inside of the curve.
Of course Venus has an atmosphere. So had Mars; but this must be very
dense. There's a sort of halo all round it. Just fancy that splendid
thing being the little black spot we saw going across the face of the
Sun a few days ago! It makes one feel rather small, doesn't it?"

"That is one of the things which a woman says when she doesn't want to
be answered; but, apart from that, you were saying----"

"What a very unpleasant person you can be when you like! I was going to
say that on the Moon we saw nothing but black and white, light and
darkness. There was no atmosphere, except in those awful places I don't
want to think about. Then, as we got near Mars, we saw a pinky
atmosphere, but not very dense; but this, you see, is a sort of
pearl-grey white shading from silver to black. You notice how much paler
it grows as we get nearer. But look--what are those tiny bright spots?
There are hundreds of them."

"Do you remember as we were leaving the Earth, how bright the mountain
ranges looked; ho