She stopped short in her eloquent pleading, for Alma, at last melted and overcome by her sweet unselfishness and loving logic, had felt the springs of her own woman’s nature unloosed, and with a low, wailing cry had sunk down upon the cushions towards her, and was sobbing out her sorrow on her lap. Isma said nothing more, for her end was achieved. She laid her left hand caressingly on Alma’s hair, and with her right she pulled the steering-lever back and swung the _Cygna_ round until her prow pointed towards home again. When they reached the villa they found the President’s private yacht resting on the terrace, for Alan’s father and mother had come over after the Council meeting to discuss with Alma’s parents the more intimate family aspect of the strange events which had cleared up in such terrible fashion the mystery which had so long shrouded the fate of the sons of the two chief families in Aeria. So revolting was the idea of their mental servitude to such an enemy of the human race as they could not but believe Olga Romanoff to be, and so frightful were the consequences that must infallibly befall humanity in consequence of it, that their parents would rather have known them dead than living under such degrading circumstances. To the Aerians, far advanced as they were beyond the standards of the present day, both in religion and philosophy, the conception of death was one which included no terrors and no more regret than was natural and common to all humanity at parting with a kinsman or a friend. As they were destined to prove, when face to face with a crisis unparalleled in the history of humanity, they regarded death merely as a natural and necessary transition from one state of existence to another, which would be higher or lower according to the preponderance of good or evil done in this life. If, therefore, the parents and kinsmen of those who were now exiles and wanderers upon the ocean wastes could have chosen, they would infinitely rather have known that Alan and Alexis had shared the fate of their companions in the Norwegian snowdrift than they would have learnt that for six years they had been the slaves and playthings of a woman who, as they guessed from Alan’s letter, combined the ambition of a Semiramis with the vices of a Messalina, and who had used the skill and knowledge which they had acquired and inherited as Princes of the Air with the avowed purpose of subverting the dominion of Aeria, undoing all that their ancestors had done, and bringing back the evil era of strife, bloodshed, and political slavery.