But there was more on the plateau than the figure of what had been. Beside it with rapt, pleading gaze on her face stood yet unmoved the life-comrade of the vanished. The manana was again in position, the observers again stood by the biometer and the psychometer. Another scene of departure and transfiguration was to be enacted. The whole consciousness of the community had granted without words the petition of Amiralno’s spouse. Nothing seemed to be so fitting as that the two should leave their trammelled life together, and within the space of a few hundred beatings of the pulse partner had followed partner. The two lives, joined for so many centuries, had come to a close together. Out into infinite space had fled the two intertwined energies, only a few heartbeats apart. Perhaps together they would find their new sphere, their new platform for still higher flight through the diviner stages of existence. The Limanorans, when they had reached what they considered the limits of their usefulness in corporeal life, gained an instinctive knowledge of the moment when death was certain to come, or perhaps it was an instinctive power of dying. It is a common thing to see amongst savage or half-civilised tribes a man or woman in full health deliberately lie down, turn the face away from friends and light, and prepare to die. They seem to know when their destiny is coming upon them, and nothing will persuade them to take measures for driving it off. Strong though the currents of life may be flowing in the veins at the moment, it is not long before they have completely ebbed, and left the body a pulseless mass of inert matter. It was this instinct, whether prophetic or suicidal, that the aged amongst this people seemed to resume when they had weighed the vital powers in their systems against the duties that new ages with their progress would bring, and found them wanting. Destiny seemed to speak out to them, when they saw the transference of the minus to the wrong side. Their minds were made up and it needed but a few days or hours to set the imprisoned energy free. In these later and more scientific ages there was some delay, and not uncommonly a postponement of the departure. A careful examination of the system by means of their new scientific instruments revealed some radical mistake in the judgment of the elder as to himself, or the demands of a new age of discovery made the need of more brains and hands imperative. The result was the same in both cases; the reason was persuaded to give up its resolve; life flowed on in the veins with even power again; all the old duties were resumed; and the day of farewells was put off till a more convenient season. But once they were convinced that they were retarding progress instead of accelerating it, the end, they felt, was within measurable distance; they straightway relinquished their grasp of life; they withdrew purpose and power of will from all their vital