'Yes and no. I have been an astronomer, but only as a necessary condition to being something higher than that. But I gave it up, for the most part, years ago: I found myself growing old--my mind losing its delicacy of perception. Diana is the master now: and she--if she chooses--may indoctrinate you in the mysteries.' And nodding kindly to me, he shut the door and was gone. He had not left me without food for reflection. I now understood--or at all events I had the key to--all that had puzzled me from the time I received his note of invitation down to the present hour. 'Diana and the stars' were to be my entertainment here: well--nothing, certainly, could so well have suited my own inclinations. The lore of the heavens, followed in such companionship, would be heavenly lore indeed! My aversion from astronomy now appeared to me unreasonable; or, rather, my uncle's words had enabled me to assign to astronomy its true place--that of an instrument to the study of 'something higher.' And Diana was the master--of this loftier science, that is. It was not likely, indeed, that my beautiful cousin would be content to spend her time in the pursuit of mere technical details; but, on the other hand, who was so fitted as she to enjoy a sort of imaginative existence among those far-shining planets, divining their strange secrets, and catching the aroma of their marvellous life? These, then, were the journeys to which my uncle had figuratively alluded; the seas that he had crossed were the profound abysses of space, and the foreign countries that he had visited were foreign in the largest sense. The longer I reflected upon the romantic conditions of this life, the more powerfully did it seize on my imagination; I seemed to have a glimpse of possibilities beyond what had hitherto been deemed the limits of human attainment; the thought of what they had perhaps dared to know made my hand tremble and my breath come fast. That discovery that Diana had mentioned--was it not some device whereby the magnifying power of the telescope had been vastly increased, enabling the student to behold sights such as man had scarcely as yet dreamed of? Oh, in that stone-built chariot of theirs, fast-bound to the whirling earth, what ineffable mysteries might not Philip Norman and Diana have explored! And now--was I to be admitted the companion of their sublime voyages?