"I am yours," she replied, "I do not exist for myself. I am swallowed up in your light, your love, in your happiness, and I care for nothing, nothing more. No. I was thinking of those stars, of those eyes looking down at us, and wondering where all the human eyes are which have watched them for millions of years as we do to-night. Where are all the hearts that have beaten as our heart beats now? Where are all the souls who have lost themselves in endless kisses in the mysterious vanished nights?" "They all exist, nothing can be destroyed. We associate heaven and earth, and we are right. In all the ages, with all peoples, among all beliefs, mankind has always asked the secret of its destiny of the starry heavens. That was one kind of divination. The Earth is a star of heaven, like Mars and Saturn, which we see yonder, earths of the sky, lighted by the same sun as we are, and like all these stars, which are distant suns. Thought translates what man has believed ever since it existed. All eyes have sought the answer to the great enigma in the skies, and Urania has replied to them since the early days of mythology." The night was coming on. The moon, slowly rising in the eastern sky, was shedding her radiance through the atmosphere, insensibly displacing the twilight; and in the city at their feet, below the thickets and ruins, a few lights were already beginning to appear here and there. The two had risen, and were standing in the centre of the tower roof, closely clasped together. She was beautiful, framed in the aureole of her hair, whose curls floated over her shoulders; little puffs of spring-like air, fragrant with perfume of violets, gillyflowers, lilacs, and May roses were rising from the neighboring gardens. Solitude and silence were about them. Their lips united in a long kiss,--the hundredth at least of that beautiful day of spring. She was still dreaming. A fugitive smile suddenly lighted up her face, then faded away like a passing cloud. "Of what are you thinking?" he asked. "Oh, nothing! A worldly, foolish thought; a little silly--nothing." "But what was it?" he asked, taking her again in his arms. "Oh! I was only wondering if people had mouths in those other worlds; because, you know--a kiss--lips--" And so the hours passed away,--days, weeks, months, in a perfect union of all their thoughts, all their feelings and impressions. The June sun was already shining at its solstice, and the time to leave for Icléa's home had come. At the appointed time she left with her father for Christiania, and Spero followed them a few days later. It was the young savant's intention to stay in Norway until autumn, and continue the studies on the aurora borealis he had begun the year before,--observations which were especially interesting to him, and which he had had scarcely time to begin. [Illustration]