ay of averting
universal ruin from the earth, and substituting for it nothing more
serious than an unparalleled display of celestial fireworks. All that
will be necessary is perfect calculation and illimitable expenditure of
money."

"Well," she said, "can't you do the calculations, Mr Lennard, and hasn't
dad got millions enough? How could he spend them better than in saving
the human race from being burnt alive? There isn't anything else, is
there?"

"There was something else," he said, stopping in front of her again. She
had risen to her feet as she said the last words, and the two stood
facing each other in the dim light, while the mechanism of the telescope
kept on clicking away in its heedless, mechanical fashion.

"Yes, there was something else, and I may as well tell you after all;
for, even if you never see or speak to me again, it won't stop the work
being done now. I could have kept this discovery to myself till it would
have been too late to do anything: for no other telescope without my
help would even find the comet for four months to come, and even now
there is hardly a day to be lost if the work is to be done in time. And
then--well, I suppose I must have gone mad for the time being, for I
thought--you will hardly believe me, I suppose--that I could make you
the price of the world's safety.

"From that, you will see how much I have loved you, however mad I may
have been. Losing you, I would have lost the world with you. If my love
lives, I thought, the world shall live: if not, if you die, the world
shall die. But just now, when you thought I was taken ill, I had a sort
of vision, and I saw you,--yes, you, Auriole as, if my one chance fails,
you must infallibly be this night thirteen months hence. I didn't see
any of the other millions who would be choking and gasping for breath
and writhing in the torture of the universal fire--I only saw you and my
own baseness in thinking, even for a moment, that such a bargain would
be possible.

"And then," he went on, more slowly, and with a different ring in his
voice, "there are the other men."

"Which other men?" she asked, looking up at him with a flush on her
cheeks and a gleam in her eyes.

"To be quite frank, and in such a situation as this, I don't see that
anything but complete candour is of any use," he replied slowly. "I need
hardly tell you that they are John Castellan and the Marquis of
Westerham. Castellan, I know, has loved you just as I have