apparently outshining the myriad worlds around her, that are so much
vaster and fairer! How deceptive is the human eye!--nearly as deceptive
as the human reason. Tell me--why did you not visit the Moon, or the
Sun, in your recent wanderings?"

This question caused me some surprise. It was certainly very strange
that I had not thought of doing so. Yet, on pondering the matter in my
mind, I remembered that during my aerial journey suns and moons had
been no more to me than flowers strewn on a meadow. I now regretted
that I had not sought to know something of those two fair luminaries
which light and warm our earth.

Heliobas, after watching my face intently, resumed:

"You cannot guess the reason of your omission? I will tell you. There
is nothing to see in either Sun or Moon. They were both inhabited
worlds once; but the dwellers in the Sun have ages ago lived their
lives and passed to the Central Sphere. The Sun is nothing now but a
burning world, burning rapidly, and surely, away: or rather, IT IS
BEING ABSORBED BACK INTO THE ELECTRIC CIRCLE FROM WHICH IT ORIGINALLY
SPRANG, TO BE THROWN OUT AGAIN IN SOME NEW AND GRANDER FORM. And so
with all worlds, suns and systems, for ever and ever. Hundreds of
thousands of those brief time-breathings called years may pass before
this consummation of the Sun; but its destruction is going on now, or
rather its absorption--and we on our cold small star warm ourselves,
and are glad, in the light of an empty world on fire!"

I listened with awe and interest.

"And the Moon?" I asked eagerly.

"The Moon does not exist. What we see is the reflection or the
electrograph of what she once was. Atmospherical electricity has
imprinted this picture of a long-ago living world upon the heavens,
just as Raphael drew his cartoons for the men of to-day to see."

"But," I exclaimed in surprise, "how about the Moon's influence on the
tides? and what of eclipses?"

"Not the Moon, but the electric photograph of a once living but now
absorbed world, has certainly an influence on the tides. The sea is
impregnated with electricity. Just as the Sun will absorb colours, so
the electricity in the sea is repelled or attracted by the electric
picture of the Moon in Heaven. Because, as a painting is full of
colour, so is that faithful sketch of a vanished sphere, drawn with a
pencil of pure light, full of immense electricity; and to carry the
simile further, just as a painting may be said to be formed