that's no reason why we might not be a couple of plague-spots in a
sinless world like this. Surely you see what I mean, I needn't put it
plainer, need I?"

Their eyes met, and he read her meaning in hers. He put his arm up over
her shoulder and drew her down towards him. Their lips met, and then he
got up and went down to the engine-room.

A couple of minutes later the _Astronef_ sprang upwards from the midst
of the delightful valley in which she was resting. No lights were shown.
In five minutes she had passed through the cloud-veil, and the next
morning when their new friends came to visit them and found that they
had vanished back into Space, there was sorrow for the first time among
the sons and daughters of the Love-Star.

CHAPTER XIV

"Five hundred million miles from the Earth, and forty-seven million
miles from Jupiter," said Redgrave as he came into breakfast on the
morning of the twenty-eighth day after leaving Venus.

During this brief period the _Astronef_ had recrossed the orbits of the
Earth and Mars and had passed through that marvellous region of the
Solar System, the Belt of the Asteroides. Nearly a hundred million miles
of their journey had lain through this zone in which hundreds and
possibly thousands of tiny planets revolve in vast orbits round the Sun.

Then had come a world less void of over three hundred million miles,
through which they voyaged alone, surrounded by the ever-constant
splendours of the heavens, and visited only now and then by one of those
Spectres of Space, which we call comets.

Astern the disc of the Sun steadily diminished and ahead the grey-blue
shape of Jupiter, the Giant of the Solar System, had grown larger and
larger until now they could see it as it had never been seen before--a
gigantic three-quarter moon filling up the whole heavens in front of
them almost from zenith to nadir. Three of its satellites, Europa,
Ganymede, and Calisto, were distinctly visible even to the naked eye,
and Europa and Ganymede, happened to be in such a position in regard to
the _Astronef_ that her crew could see not only the bright sides turned
towards the Sun, but also the black shadow-spots which they cast on the
cloud-veiled face of the huge planet. Calisto was above the horizon
hanging like a tiny flicker of yellowish-red light above the rounded
edge of Jupiter, and Io was invisible behind the planet.

"Five hundred million miles!" said Zaidie, with a little shiver; "that
s