“It is a good omen!” cried Miss Carmichael.

“Humph!” responded the professor, shaking his head but smiling good-humouredly; “that is a mere superstition I’m afraid.  It is simply an optical effect, a variety of the phenomenon called ‘anthelia,’ like Ulloa’s Circle and the famous ‘Spectre of the Brocken.’”

“Explain it how you will,” rejoined Miss Carmichael, “to me it is an emblem of hope.  It cheers my heart.”

“I am very glad to hear it, and I should be very sorry to crush your hopes,” said Gazen pleasantly.  “We can sometimes derive moral encouragement and profit from external phenomena.  A rainbow in the midst of a storm is a cheering sight.  I daresay there is a reasonable basis, too, for certain superstitions.  St. Elmo’s Fire may, for instance, from natural causes, be a sign of good weather, only there is nothing supernatural about it.”

“I am not in the secrets of the supernatural,” replied Miss Carmichael, “but I believe that if we do not look for the supernatural, if we shut our eyes to it, we are not likely to see it.”

“Science has proved that so many things formerly thought to be supernatural are quite natural,” observed the astronomer a little more humbly.

“Perhaps the natural and the supernatural are one,” said Miss Carmichael.  “Does a thing cease to be supernatural because we know something about it?”

“Well, it may have another meaning for us.  Before the days of science, great mistakes were made in our interpretations of phenomena.  Superstition is born of ignorance, and we can see the germ of it in the child who is frightened by a bogie, or the horse that shies at the moonlight.”

“Its higher parent is a belief in the unseen.”

“In any case it has done an immense amount of harm,” said the professor.

“And probably quite as much good,” responded Miss Carmichael.  “However, don’t think me a friend of superstition.  But in getting rid of it let us take care that we do not fall into the opposite error.  It seems to me that if science had all its own way it would reduce man and nature to a little machine working in the corner of a big one; but I think it will cost us too dear if it make us lose our sense of the divine origin and spiritual significance of the universe.”

Further argument was cut short by the car suddenly dashing into the clouds with a noiseless ease that astonished us, for they had appeared as solid as the rock.

Lost in the vapours, our car seemed at rest; but although we saw nothing, we could hear a vague and distant murmur which charmed our ears after the long silence of space like a strain of music.  Whether this was due to the sounds of the surface collected in the clouds, or to electrical discharges I cannot say, for we were trying to solve the mystery by hearkening to it, when it abruptly died away as the car shot into the clear air beneath the clouds.

“The sea! the sea!” cried Miss Carmichael, starting up in joyful excitement to join her father; and sure enough we were flying above a dark blue hemisphere which could only be the ocean.