As their hands met, and the two girls stood face to face, motionless for a moment, they made an exquisite contrast of opposite types of womanly beauty—Alma tall and stately, with a proudly-carried head, clear, pale skin, grey eyes, and perfectly regular features, and Isma, a year younger and a good inch shorter, slender of form yet strong and lithe of limb, with golden, silky hair and sunny-blue eyes, fresh, rosy skin, and mobile features which scarcely ever seemed to wear the same expression for a couple of minutes together—as sweet a daughter of delight as ever man could look upon with eyes of love and longing.
But she was grave enough now, for her friend’s sorrow was hers too, and its shadow lay with equal darkness upon her. The ready tears welled up under her dark lashes as she looked upon Alma’s white, drawn face and dry, burning eyes, and her low, sweet voice was broken by a sob as, passing her arm round her waist, she drew her towards the boat and said—
“Come, dear, this sorrow belongs to me as well as you and we must help each other to bear it. I have brought my new boat so that we can take a flight round the valley and talk about it quietly. If two heads are better than one, so are two hearts.”
Alma’s only reply to the invitation was a sad, sweet smile, and a gentle caress, but the welcome, loving sympathy had come when it was most sorely needed, and so she got into the aerial boat with Isma, and a few moments later the beautiful craft was bearing them at an easy speed southward down the valley.
CHAPTER XI.
THE SNAKE IN EDEN.
NO more perfect place could have been imagined for an exchange of confidences and sympathy between two girls situated as Alma and Isma were than the oval, daintily-cushioned interior of the Cygna, as Isma had called her swan-prowed craft.
Skirting the mountains, at a distance of about five hundred yards from them, and at a height of about as many feet from the summits of the undulating foothills below, the Cygna sped quietly along at a speed of some twenty-five miles an hour. The temperature of the tropic night was so soft and warm, and the air was so dry that it was not even necessary for them to make use of the light wraps that lay in the stern of the boat.