. But you, dear----"

"I'm you, and so I take the same chances as you do. Besides, we're not
perfect enough for a world where there isn't any sin. We should probably
get quite miserable there. No, home's home, as you say."

"Then home it is, dear!" he replied.

The resplendent hemisphere of the Love-Star sank swiftly down into the
vault of Space, growing smaller and dimmer as the _Astronef_ sped
towards the little black spot on the face of the Sun, which to them was
like a buoy marking a place of utter and hopeless shipwreck in the Ocean
of Immensity.

The chronometer, still set to Earth-time, had now begun to mark the last
hours of the _Astronef's_ voyage. She was not only travelling at a speed
of which figures could give no comprehensible idea, but the Sun,
Mercury, and the Earth were rushing towards her with a compound
velocity, composed of the movement of the Solar System through Space and
of the movement of the two planets round the Sun.

Murgatroyd was at his post in the engine-room. Redgrave and Zaidie had
gone into the conning-tower, perhaps for the last time. For good fortune
or evil, for life or death, they would see the end of the voyage
together.

"How far yet, dear?" she said, as Venus began to slip away behind them,
rising like a splendid moon in their wake.

"Only sixty million miles or so, a matter of a few hours, more or
less--it all depends," he replied, without taking his eyes off the
compass.

"Sixty millions! Why I feel almost at home again."

"But we have to turn the corner of the street yet, dear, and after that
there's a fall of more than twenty-five million miles on to the more or
less kindly breast of Mother Earth."

"A fall! It does sound rather awful when you put it that way; but I am
not going to let you frighten me. I believe Mother Earth will receive
her wandering children quite as kindly as they deserve."

The moon-like disc of Venus grew swiftly smaller, and the black spot on
the face of the Sun larger and larger as the _Astronef_ rushed silently
and imperceptibly, and yet with almost inconceivable velocity towards
doom or fortune. Neither Zaidie nor Redgrave spoke again for nearly
three hours--hours which to them seemed to pass like so many minutes.
Their eyes were fixed on the black disc of Mercury, which, as they
approached it, expanded with magical rapidity till it completely
eclipsed the blazing orb behind it. Their thoughts were far away on the
still invisible Earth a