ared for sudden streaks of reticence or
secretiveness. The fact that he had discouraged his previous advances
on the subject of Miss Wycliffe was enough to explain this present
silence, but he felt that Emmet was acutely conscious of her impending
arrival. He could not help wondering also whether he would linger
deliberately until she should come. Speculating thus, he sat down in
the chair and trained the telescope upon Saturn.

"There," he said, rising. "What do you make of that?"

"I see a star," Emmet answered after a while, "with a ring of mist
around it--two rings."

"There are four, at least," said Leigh; "but the inner and intermediate
rings are dark. A better instrument would show a greenish hue. There
are eight satellites besides. You can imagine what sort of moonlit
nights they have in Saturn, supposing that any one lives there to enjoy
them."

Emmet drew a deep breath of wonder, and it was evident that his
unimaginative mind was struggling with new conceptions. There was a
gleam of humour in his eyes which contrasted oddly with the suggestion
of awe in his voice, as he looked up and answered: "It must be a great
place for lovers, professor. And how far away might it be?"

"Let me see--something over eight hundred and eighty millions of miles
from the sun. Its distance from us depends"--

"Never mind," Emmet put in. "A few million miles more or less don't
bother me any. It makes things down here seem rather small, does n't
it? Politics, for example."

"It has the effect of readjusting our perspective a little," Leigh
admitted. "I wanted to show you that planet at this time, because it
is now at its best. If you waited another seven or eight years, you
would see it only as a ball, for the rings would then be edgewise to
the plane of your vision. Twice in about thirty years the rings seem
to disappear, and twice they fan out to their largest extent. You 'll
never see them broader than now."

Without a word Emmet turned back to the telescope.

"You can imagine," Leigh continued, sure of his listener's interest,
"how that change puzzled the earlier astronomers. They thought that
Saturn was merely a central ball with two handles, like the handles of
a soup tureen; and when Galileo watched them grow thinner and thinner
and at last disappear, he wondered whether Saturn had devoured his own
children, as he expressed it. It was n't until fifty years later that
a Dutchman named Huygens disc