ialty. I see nothing but Mars, all
Mars! Have you become infatuated with a single planet, to the neglect of
all the others? I like it, though. We will study Mars together."

Her face brightened. "I am so glad!" she said. "I have studied nothing
else for months. It has been so almost from the day you left us. And it
is not Mars alone I am studying; it is the great problem of
communication with the people there. Oh, Julius, it is possible, and the
idea is something wonderful! Just think what would follow! It would be
the beginning of an understanding between reasoning creatures of the
whole universe!"

He said that it was something wonderful, indeed, maybe only a dream, but
a very fascinating one.

"Oh, it is no dream," she answered. "It is a glorious possibility. Why,
just think of it, we know, positively know, that Mars is inhabited.
Think of what has been discovered. It was perceived years ago that Mars
was intersected by canals, evidently made by human--I suppose that's the
word--human beings. They run from the extremes of ocean bays to the
extremes of other ocean bays, and connect, too, the many lakes there.
Nature does not make such lines. They are of equal width, those canals,
throughout their whole length, and Schiaparelli has even watched them in
construction. First there is a dark line, as if the earth had been
disturbed, and then it becomes bright when the water is let in.
Sometimes, too, double canals are made there close to each other,
running side by side, as if one were used for travel and transportation
in one direction and one in another. And there are many other things as
wonderful. The world of Mars is like our own. There are continents and
seas and islands there--it is not a dead, dry surface like the moon--and
it has clouds and rains and snows and seasons, just as we have, and of
the same intensity as ours. Oh, Julius, we _must_ communicate with
them!"

"But, my dear, that implies equal interest on their part. How do we know
them to be intelligent enough?"

"Why, there are the canals. They must be reasoners in Mars. Besides, how
do we know but that they far surpass us in all learning! Mars is much
older in one way than the Earth, far more advanced in its planet life,
and why should not its people, through countless ages of advantage, have
become wiser than we? Whatever their form, they may be superior to us in
every way. We are to them, too, something which must have been studied
for thousands o