Without waiting for the words that her now smiling lips were opening to utter, he took her unresisting in his arms. Then her proudly carried, wing-crowned head drooped at last in sweet submission, and rested on his heart; and as he turned her face up to his to take his kiss of re-betrothal, he said-- “That tells me that I may live. Now we are immortal, you and I, for this kiss is our eternity!” Then their lips met, and for the instant Time had no more beginning or end. The impending ruin of the world was forgotten; for Love had spoken, and the very voice of Doom itself was silent amidst the happiness of their heedless souls. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE SIGN IN THE SKY. WHEN the news of what had happened at midnight in the palm grove was published the next morning far and wide through the valley of Aeria it would have been impossible to imagine that an irrevocable sentence of death was overhanging the land and all its inhabitants, save those who were to be selected to take the one chance that remained of surviving the chaos that was to come. There was no one in the valley to whom Alan’s story was not familiar in all its details, there was not a single heart that had not in the midst of its own happiness sympathised with him and Alma in their sorrow, and so, when that sorrow was at last turned into joy, everyone forgot for the moment the fate whose approach was so near and so certain, and rejoiced with them in the happiness that was great enough to raise them above the gloom that was already stealing over the world. But in the midst of the general rejoicing came the decision of the Council upon the request which Alan had submitted to his father, and this, though he was forced to confess it wise and just, was by no means what, in his enthusiasm, he could have wished. The rulers of Aeria absolutely refused to permit any of the air-ships to leave the valley for at least two months to come. They recognised with perfect approval the nobility of the resolve which Alan had taken to carry the message of the world’s approaching end to those nations which he had been, partially at least, responsible for plunging into the horrors of war, but they insisted that the concerns of Aeria must, in their eyes, take precedence of those of the outside world. There was much to do, and the time for doing it was short. What was perhaps the greatest engineering task in the history of the world had to be conceived and completed within the next four months, and as Alan and Alexis were admittedly the two most skilful practical engineers in the State, the Council declined to allow them to run the almost certain risk of death at the hands of their enemies when their knowledge and skill ought to be devoted to the work of ensuring, as far as possible, the preservation of that remnant of the human race who should be destined to seek safety in the caverns of Mount Austral.