Arnold's life of hard, honest work, and his constant habit of facing truth in its most uncompromising forms, had made dissimulation almost impossible to him; and added to that, situated as he was, there was no necessity for it. Colston knew of his love, and the Princess had guessed it long ago. Did Natasha know his open secret? Of that he hardly dared to be sure, though something told him that the inevitable moment of knowledge was near at hand. For the first twenty-four hours of the voyage he had seen very little of either her or the Princess, as they had mostly remained in their cabins, enjoying a complete rest after the terrible fatigue and suffering they had gone through since their capture in Moscow, but on the Thursday morning they had had breakfast in the saloon with him and Colston, and had afterwards spent a portion of the morning on deck, deeply interested in watching the fight between the British and Russians. Thanks to Radna's foresight, they had each found a trunk full of suitable clothing on board the _Ariel_. These had been taken to Drumcraig by Colston, and placed in the cabins intended for their use, and so they were able to discard the uncouth but useful costumes in which they had made their escape. In the afternoon Arnold had had to perform the pleasant task of showing them over the _Ariel_, explaining the working of the machinery, and putting the wonderful vessel through various evolutions to show what she was capable of doing. He rushed her at full speed through the air, took flying leaps over outlying spurs of mountain ranges that lay in their path, swooped down into valleys, and flew over level plains fifty yards from the ground, like an albatross over the surface of a smooth tropic sea. Then he soared up from the earth again, until the horizon widened out to vast extent, and they could see the mighty buttresses of "the Roof of the World" stretching out below them in an endless succession of ranges as far as the eye could reach. Neither Natasha nor the Princess could find words to at all adequately express all that they saw and learnt during that day of wonders, and all night Natasha could hardly sleep for waking dreams of universal empire, and a world at peace equitably ruled by a power that had no need of aggression, because all the realms of earth and air belonged to those who wielded it. When at last she did go to sleep, it was to dream again, and this time of herself, the Angel of the Revolution, sharing the aërial throne of the world-empire with the man who had made revolutions impossible by striking the sword from the hand of the tyrants of earth for ever. CHAPTER XVI. A WOOING IN MID AIR. After breakfast on the Friday morning, Natasha and Arnold were standing in the bows of the _Ariel_, admiring the magnificent panorama that lay stretched out five thousand feet below them.