e beheld Swithin bending over a scroll of paper which lay on
the little table beside him. The small lantern that illuminated it
showed also that he was warmly wrapped up in a coat and thick cap, behind
him standing the telescope on its frame.

What was he doing? She looked over his shoulder upon the paper, and saw
figures and signs. When he had jotted down something he went to the
telescope again.

'What are you doing to-night?' she said in a low voice.

Swithin started, and turned. The faint lamp-light was sufficient to
reveal her face to him.

'Tedious work, Lady Constantine,' he answered, without betraying much
surprise. 'Doing my best to watch phenomenal stars, as I may call them.'

'You said you would show me the heavens if I could come on a starlight
night. I have come.'

Swithin, as a preliminary, swept round the telescope to Jupiter, and
exhibited to her the glory of that orb. Then he directed the instrument
to the less bright shape of Saturn.

'Here,' he said, warming up to the subject, 'we see a world which is to
my mind by far the most wonderful in the solar system. Think of streams
of satellites or meteors racing round and round the planet like a fly-
wheel, so close together as to seem solid matter!' He entered further
and further into the subject, his ideas gathering momentum as he went on,
like his pet heavenly bodies.

When he paused for breath she said, in tones very different from his own,
'I ought now to tell you that, though I am interested in the stars, they
were not what I came to see you about. . . . I first thought of
disclosing the matter to Mr. Torkingham; but I altered my mind, and
decided on you.'

She spoke in so low a voice that he might not have heard her. At all
events, abstracted by his grand theme, he did not heed her. He
continued,--

'Well, we will get outside the solar system altogether,--leave the whole
group of sun, primary and secondary planets quite behind us in our
flight, as a bird might leave its bush and sweep into the whole forest.
Now what do you see, Lady Constantine?' He levelled the achromatic at
Sirius.

She said that she saw a bright star, though it only seemed a point of
light now as before.

'That's because it is so distant that no magnifying will bring its size
up to zero. Though called a fixed star, it is, like all fixed stars,
moving with inconceivable velocity; but no magnifying will show that
velocity as anything but rest.'

And t