"Well, we can't stay here much longer. I must get back to my work—and you know we intended to pay a flying visit to Mercury, and if possible to get a closer look at the sun."
"All right. You can go as soon as you like. I shall remain behind. Carmichael will take you to the earth, and then come back here for me."
"You talk as if it were merely a question of a drive."
"I think we have proved that it is not more dangerous to go from one planet to another than it is to get about town."
"If an accident should occur. If Carmichael cannot return—"
"I shall be much happier here than I should be on the earth. Even if I had never met Alumion I think I should come back and stay on Venus."
"It is certainly a better world, as far as we have seen, but remember your own words, 'Man was made for the earth.' Don't you think this eternal summer—these Elysian Fields—would pall upon you in course of time? Constant bliss, like everlasting honey, might cloy your earthly palate, and make you sigh for our poor, old, wicked, miserable world, that in spite of all its faults and crimes, is yet so interesting, so variable, so dramatic—so dear."
"Never. With Alumion even Hades would be an Elysium."
"Think of your friends at home, and what you owe to them; how they will miss you."
"I cannot be of much service to them. They will soon forget me."