He leaned gently toward the young girl, and their heads touched. He let fall the hand of the dead.
Eva shuddered. “No,” she said.
Then, suddenly, he sprang to his feet in terror; the dead woman had revived. She had withdrawn the hand which he had taken in his own, and had opened her eyes. She made a movement, looking at them.
“‘BEHOLD, WHERE WE SHALL BE TOMORROW!’”
“I wake from a strange dream,” she said, without seeming surprised at the presence of Omegar. “Behold, my children, my dream;” and she pointed to the planet Jupiter, shining with dazzling splendor in the sky.
And as they gazed upon the star, to their astonished vision, it appeared to approach them, to grow larger, to take the place of the frozen scene about them.
Its immense seas were covered with ships. Aerial fleets cleaved the air. The shores of its seas and the mouths of its great rivers were the scenes of a prodigious activity. Brilliant cities appeared, peopled by moving multitudes. Neither the details of their habitations nor the forms of these new beings could be distinguished, but one divined that here was a humanity quite different from ours, living in the bosom of another nature, having other senses at its disposal; and one felt also that this vast world was incomparably superior to the earth.
“Behold, where we shall be tomorrow!” said the dying woman. “We shall find there all the human race, perfected and transformed. Jupiter has received the inheritance of the earth. Our world has accomplished its mission, and life is over here below. Farewell!”
She stretched out her arms to them; they bent over her pale face and pressed a long kiss upon her forehead. But they perceived that this forehead was cold as marble, in spite of this strange awakening.