templated Elza with Tarrano now, I felt
that he was everything a young girl would fancy. How could she help
loving him?

At night, when sleep would not come to me, I would lie tossing, thinking
of it. Did Elza love me--or Tarrano? Once I had thought she loved me.
But she had never said so.

It was out of this constant thinking of Elza that the first of the
incidents I have mentioned, arose. There came to me one night the
feeling that Elza was near me. I awoke from half sleep to full
wakefulness. In my bedroom, upon the low couch on which I lay, the aural
lights of Venus spread their vivid tints. The palace was silent; I sat
up, pressing my palms to my throbbing temples.

_Elza was coming nearer to me!_

I knew it. Not by any of my bodily senses. A knowledge, which suddenly I
realized that I had. A moment, and then I was conscious of her voice! No
sound; my ears heard nothing. Yet my brain was aware of familiar tones.
I recognized them, as one can remember how a loved voice sounded when
last it was heard.

But this was no memory. A present actuality; it rang soundless in my
brain. Elza's voice. Anxious! Frightened!

At first only the confused _tone_ of it. Then the consciousness of
words. Two reiterated words:

_"Danger! Jac! Danger! Jac!"_

I waited no longer, but rushed to Georg and Maida--beautiful Maida in
her robe of sleep with her white hair tumbling about her. Georg half
awake--yet almost at once he could understand me, and explain.

Natural, instinctive telepathy! It had not occurred to me. I had never
bothered to develop telepathy; and indeed with any degree of fluency--or
even of surety of reception--the phenomenon is difficult to perfect.
Yet, as I knew, with a loved one absent upon whom one's thoughts dwell
constantly--in time of stress telepathy is occasionally automatically
established.

It was so in Georg and Maida's case, back there in the Mountain Station
on Earth. Telepathy was the explanation of Georg's mysterious actions as
he stood there before the sending mirrors, crossed the room in
confusion, and like one in a dream leaped from the window to be seized
by Tarrano's spies. Maida had been abducted a moment before. Georg's
brain became aware of it. Her danger, the appeal she sent to him.

So it now seemed to be from Elza to me. Georg, out of bed now beside me,
urged me to greater efforts of concentration, that I might understand
what message Elza was sending.

_"Elza! Elza dear! Where