My next business was to break the plan to Arowhena, and to devise the means for getting her into the car.  I felt sure that she would come with me, but had made up my mind that if her courage failed her, the whole thing should come to nothing.  Arowhena and I had been in constant communication through her maid, but I had thought it best not to tell her the details of my scheme till everything was settled.  The time had now arrived, and I arranged with the maid that I should be admitted by a private door into Mr. Nosnibor’s garden at about dusk on the following evening.

I came at the appointed time; the girl let me into the garden and bade me wait in a secluded alley until Arowhena should come.  It was now early summer, and the leaves were so thick upon the trees that even though some one else had entered the garden I could have easily hidden myself.  The night was one of extreme beauty; the sun had long set, but there was still a rosy gleam in the sky over the ruins of the railway station; below me was the city already twinkling with lights, while beyond it stretched the plains for many a league until they blended with the sky.  I just noted these things, but I could not heed them.  I could heed nothing, till, as I peered into the darkness of the alley, I perceived a white figure gliding swiftly towards me.  I bounded towards it, and ere thought could either prompt or check, I had caught Arowhena to my heart and covered her unresisting cheek with kisses.

So overjoyed were we that we knew not how to speak; indeed I do not know when we should have found words and come to our senses, if the maid had not gone off into a fit of hysterics, and awakened us to the necessity of self-control; then, briefly and plainly, I unfolded what I proposed; I showed her the darkest side, for I felt sure that the darker the prospect the more likely she was to come.  I told her that my plan would probably end in death for both of us, and that I dared not press it—­that at a word from her it should be abandoned; still that there was just a possibility of our escaping together to some part of the world where there would be no bar to our getting married, and that I could see no other hope.

She made no resistance, not a sign or hint of doubt or hesitation.  She would do all I told her, and come whenever I was ready; so I bade her send her maid to meet me nightly—­told her that she must put a good face on, look as bright and happy as she could, so as to make her father and mother and Zulora think that she was forgetting me—­and be ready at a moment’s notice to come to the Queen’s workshops, and be concealed among the ballast and under rugs in the car of the balloon; and so we parted.

I hurried my preparations forward, for I feared rain, and also that the King might change his mind; but the weather continued dry, and in another week the Queen’s workmen had finished the balloon and car, while the gas was ready to be turned on into the balloon at any moment.  All being now prepared I was to ascend on the following morning.  I had stipulated for being allowed to take abundance of rugs and wrappings as protection from the cold of the upper atmosphere, and also ten or a dozen good-sized bags of ballast.