"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.
This visit to Norway was the prolongation of a happy dream. The fair Northern girl cast an aureole of perpetual winsomeness about him which would perhaps have made him still forget the attractions of science if she herself had not had, as we have seen, an insatiable taste for study. The experiments which the indefatigable seeker had undertaken on atmospheric electricity interested her as much as they did him. She too wanted to know about those mysterious flames in the aurora borealis which palpitate at night in high atmospheres; and as his series of investigations led him to desire a balloon ascension, in order to reach and surprise the phenomenon at its source, she also experienced the same wish. He tried to dissuade her from it, those aeronautic expeditions not being free from danger. But the very idea of sharing a peril with him would have been enough to make her deaf to her loved one's entreaties. After long hesitation Spero decided to take her with him, and prepared for an ascension from the University of Christiania on the first night of the aurora borealis.
[V.]
THE AURORA BOREALIS.
THE disturbances of the magnetic needle had announced the aurora's presence even before the sun went down, and the inflation of the balloon with pure hydrogen gas was begun while the sky showed in the magnetic North that coloring of golden green which is always the sure indication of an aurora borealis. The preparations were ended in a couple of hours. The atmosphere, entirely free from all clouds, was perfectly limpid, the stars twinkled in the bosom of a sky profoundly dark and without a moon; but towards the North a soft light shone in an arc above a black segment, throwing into the upper atmosphere slight flushes of a pale greenish rose color, symbolizing the palpitations of an unknown life. Icléa's father, who was watching the inflation of the balloon, had no suspicion that his daughter was going; but at the last moment she stepped into the car as if to inspect it. Spero gave the signal, and the balloon rose slowly, majestically, over the city of Christiania, which, lighted by thousands of lamps, appeared under the eyes of the travellers rising through the air, to diminish in size as it disappeared in the darkness.
