THE eastern mountains were still casting their long shadows over the lawns and fields, the vineyards and the gardens of Aeria on the morning of the eleventh of May in the year 2037 of the Christian Era and the hundred and thirty-third year of the Peace, but the whole population of the lovely valley were already afoot and abroad, for this was the most momentous day that had been in the history of the colony since Richard Arnold had first crossed the Northern Ridge with Natasha beside him in the conning-tower of the little Ariel, in those days the only air-ship that existed in the world, to lay the foundations of that throne from which their descendants had ruled the nations of the earth for a century and a quarter.

To-day the year of probation imposed by the Council upon Alan Arnoldson and his companion in misfortune, in exile, and in victory, was to expire, and the long-lost wanderers were to return to their home and kindred.

Very soon after it became light hundreds of aerial boats and yachts of every variety of design and ornamentation that the taste and skill of the most highly-cultivated race of people the world had ever seen could devise, came floating in towards the vast city of Aeria from the marble palaces and villas which were scattered throughout the length and breadth of the central African Paradise.

Along the broad, smooth white roads, too, which led from[227] the southern portions of the valley, round the lake to the northern shore on which the city stood, groups of people, with here and there husbands and wives and pairs of yet unwedded lovers, were gliding in long, swift, easy curves on noiseless wheel-skates over the polished marble of the pavements.

Bright with the gayest and yet most perfectly-harmonised colours, blazing with jewels and precious metals, from their gold or crystal-winged coronets to the burnished silver framework of their skates, splendid in stature, and glowing with perfect health—if some man of the present day could have beheld these dwellers in Aeria on their way to hold high festival in their capital, he would have thought that he had strayed into some other and higher sphere, inhabited by some glorified race of beings who had left the toils and cares and pollutions of earth far behind them on some lower plane of existence.

Doubtless, indeed, from some such sphere the reincarnated spirits of those who, a hundred and thirty-three years before, had passed through the tremendous ordeal of the Terror, and in their hour of well-won triumph had made such a splendid future possible for their descendants, looked down with approving eyes, not undarkened by a shade of sorrow for woes to come, upon this glorious scene of the fruition of the harvest that they had sown, this realisation of the long-sought ideal of human brotherhood, where there was no evil because men had learnt at last that good was better than evil.

Vast as was the stately city, which was at once the capital and the only town of Aeria, it was soon comfortably filled by the brilliant throngs of visitors that came pouring into it by road and through the air. The broad white streets, lined with their double groves of palms and tree-ferns, soon blazed with colour, and became vocal with greetings and laughter, and all the houses which lined them were thrown open to all visitors who chose to come and claim hospitality for the day of rejoicing.

On the terrace in front of her father’s villa, on the slopes that rose to the west of the city, Alma stood with Isma watching[228] the brilliant scene below and around them, and speculating on the coming events of the day which for them had a supreme interest, such as no other inhabitant of the valley could feel.

“It will be a right royal home-coming for our two heroes, won’t it, Alma?” said Isma, slipping her little hand through her friend’s arm; “almost worthy of the great deeds that they have done to regain what will be given back to them to-day—and yet, alas! there is to be a spot on the sun of happiness for all that. Alma, are you still quite sure that poor Alan will have to come back and not find that which above all other things he comes to seek?”

A faint flush rose to Alma’s cheeks as she replied, in a low, steady tone—

“Yes, Isma, alas! as you say, I am still sure of that, supposing always that he really does come to seek what you mean. I know that no man ever lived more worthy the love of woman than he is. Yet, God help me, I cannot give mine.

“I know, too, that he will come back to-day crowned with more honour than any Aerian, save Alexis, ever won before him since the days of our ancestors—and yet whenever I permit myself even to dream of him as a lover, a dark, beautiful, cruel face looks with black, burning eyes into mine, and two sweet, scornfully-smiling lips say in a whisper that sounds almost like a serpent’s hiss—‘You may take him now, for I have done with him. Take him and ask him to tell you how well he and I loved when my spell was strong upon him and he forgot both you and all his kindred for sake of me.’

“It is horrible, horrible beyond all thought or speech, but it is so, Isma, and I, of all the thousands of Aeria who will make merry to-day, shall be sad at heart and praying for the night to come.”

“I don’t believe it, Alma, however sincerely you may do so—as, of course, you do,” replied Isma impatiently. “It is not your true and loving self that is speaking. It is the woman who has been brooding over a shattered idol that never really was a man of flesh and blood.

“I tell you again—and before that sun has set you will confess[229] in your own heart that I am right—that you have never known the Alan who is coming home to-day any more than I have known the Alexis who is coming home with him. Neither you nor I have ever seen two such men as they will be—men who have passed through such experiences as no other Aerians ever had, who have suffered and conquered, dared and done, like them.

“You must put away those morbid fancies of yours, dearest; they are not worthy of you any more than Olga Romanoff is worthy to cause you an hour’s unhappiness. Never mind thinking about Alan as a lover now. I tell you you have never seen him, therefore it will be time enough for you to begin to do that when you do see him.

“For my own part, I don’t mind telling you—of course, strictly between ourselves—that though I can hardly say that I love Alexis as he is now, since I do not know what he is like, I am quite prepared to fall in love with him all over again on the slightest provocation. And now, after that confession, I think we had better close the discussion and get ready to go over to the city.”

This frank avowal, uttered as it was with a delightful candour quite irresistible in its charm, brought a smile to Alma’s lips in spite of her own sombre thoughts. She slipped her arm round Isma’s waist, and led her towards one of the long windows which opened out on to the terrace under the pillared portico which ran the whole length of the front of the villa.

“I quite agree with you,” she said. “If that tell-tale face of yours is no better masked than it is now, when you meet your Alexis I don’t think you will have long to wait for the provocation. Ah, well, I suppose—in fact, I am sure—that you take by far the wiser view, and I would give anything to be able to look upon Alan as you are ready to do on Alexis.

“But no, it’s no use; do what I will I cannot think of him apart from that Syren who has held him in the bondage of her spells all these years. I know it is unreasonable, and yet[230] he seems, even now that he has regained his freedom, to belong to her more than he ever did to me.”

“That, my dear Alma,” replied Isma, half seriously and half in jest, “is as nearly absurd as anything that such a serious and cultivated person as yourself could say. If I could give you a share of my more trivial temperament you would just say that you are still so desperately jealous of Olga Romanoff that you cannot bring yourself to think of Alan as a possible lover until you feel quite sure that he hates her as intensely as you do. That may not be a very heroic way of putting it, but I think we shall find it pretty near the truth before you have known the new Alan very long.”

Alma laughed more musically than mirthfully at this sally, but made no reply to it in words. There was, perhaps, more truth in the half-bantering, half-reproachful words than she would have cared to admit, even to her best-beloved and most confidential friend, and so she took a wise refuge in silence, from which Isma, in the gladness of her own heart, drew her own conclusions.

It might have been that there were depths in Alma’s nature which not even their life-long friendship and their common sorrow had enabled her to fathom, but for the present she was quite satisfied that jealousy of Olga and anger at the advantage which Alma believed her to have taken of her power were the sole reasons that prevented her from regarding Alan as she had confessed herself ready and willing to regard Alexis.

When they left the terrace the two girls had breakfast together in Alma’s own room in a privacy which the other members of the family tacitly respected, knowing as they did that the events of the day would bear a totally different significance for them to that which they would have for all the other inhabitants of the valley.

By the time the sun began to show his disc above the ridges of the eastern mountains they were on their way to the city with Alma’s mother and father in one of the aerial boats that were used for transit about the interior of the valley.

[231]

They alighted on the flat roof of the President’s official residence, a splendid palace of the purest white marble, which stood on the northern side of the great square, from the centre of which rose the golden-domed building which served the Aerians as a meeting-place on all public occasions. It was here that the decrees of the Council were promulgated, and here, too, on every seventh day were held the simply impressive religious services prescribed by the Aerian form of worship.

Soon after they had arrived at the President’s house a great mellow-toned bell sounded the hour of six from the cupola above the dome, and, as the last stroke died away, a chorus of silvery chimes rose up from a hundred towers in different parts of the city, and went floating across the lake and down the valley to the southward, caught up and echoed as it went by peals from the thousand palaces and villas scattered about the lower slopes of the mountains.

This was the signal for the commencement of the first ceremony of the day, and the gaily-dressed, smiling throngs of visitors to the city began to file in orderly, leisurely fashion into the eight wide-open doors which led to the interior of the vast temple in the middle of the central square.

In the midst of the immense open area under the dome was a space about twenty feet square, enclosed by low railings of massive gold, and in this stood three tall pillars of marble without a single flaw or vein to mar their perfect whiteness from base to capital. On each of them stood an urn of exquisite shape, each carved out of a solid block of crystal, and each containing a small quantity of ashes.

Each pillar bore an inscription in letters of gold let into the marble. The centre one was slightly higher than the other two, and its inscription consisted of the single word

“Natas.”

The urns on the other two pillars contained a larger quantity of ashes. On the pillar to the right hand, facing the main entrance to the temple, were the words—

[232]

Richard Arnold,
First Conqueror of the Air.

Natasha,
The Angel of the Revolution.

And on that to the left—

Alan Tremayne,
First President of the Anglo-Saxon Federation.

Muriel Tremayne,
His Wife.

The square in which these pillars stood was the most sacred spot on all the earth in the eyes of the Aerians, sanctified as it was by the ashes of those who had made possible the Great Deliverance, and brought peace on earth after countless ages of strife. Every tongue was silent, and every head was bowed in reverence as those who entered the temple first caught sight of the pillars and their priceless burdens.

Then the vast and ever-swelling congregation ranged itself in orderly files, all fronting towards an elevated rostrum which stood at one of the angles of the great square under the dome, formed by the junction of the four naves, with their long pillared aisles which ran towards the four points of the compass.

Suddenly all the carillons that were still ringing out over the city ceased, and in the midst of the perfect silence the President ascended the rostrum to address the expectant assembly. Although he spoke but a little above his ordinary tone, every word could be heard with perfect distinctness throughout the immense interior of the building, for a system of electric transmitters, a development of the modern telephone, carried his voice simultaneously to a hundred parts of the walls, so that those who were standing farthest from him heard quite as distinctly as those who were close to the rostrum.

He began by a brief narration of all that had happened to Aeria and the world since the fatal day on which Olga[233] Romanoff had set foot on the deck of the Ithuriel to the present moment, and made no attempt to conceal or to minimise the tremendous and disastrous consequences that had flowed from that fatal and yet innocent mistake on the part of his son.

He confessed that the empire of the air, that priceless legacy which they had received from its first conqueror, had been lost, and that, not only the outside nations of the earth, but even Aeria itself stood upon the eve of a conflict in comparison with which even the War of the Terror itself would prove almost insignificant. All that had been won then had now to be fought for over again, and fought for with weapons the destructiveness of which made impossible any estimate of the carnage and desolation that were about to burst upon the world.

Then he described how Alan and Alexis, acting under the orders of the Council, had, after vainly trying to arouse the rulers and senates of Anglo-Saxondom to a sense of their danger and responsibility, proclaimed martial law throughout the whole area of the Federation, reasserted the supremacy which the Council had resigned nearly seven years before, and taken the direct conduct of affairs into their own hands.

He told how the manhood of Europe, America, Southern Africa, and Australia had, under the influence of their appeals, roused itself from the sloth of prosperity and the vain dreams of democracy, and under their leadership had mustered millions upon millions strong to oppose those who determined to rivet the chains of despotism once more upon the limbs of free men.

The energy and devotion of the two men whose exile was to end that day had accomplished this miracle in less than a twelvemonth. All the mechanical resources of the Federation had been simultaneously devoted to the building of an aerial navy, which already numbered nearly a thousand vessels, and more than a hundred dockyards had achieved the construction of a navy of over a thousand submarine warships, while millions of small-arms had been sent out from Aeria, or[234] manufactured in the arsenals of the Federation for the equipment of the newly-created armies.

What the issue would be of the mighty struggle which would begin in six days, no man could tell, but all that could be done to give the victory to Aeria and the Federation had been done, and the rest lay in the hands of the God of Battles, who had given their ancestors the victory in the days of the Terror. The President concluded his address by saying—

“Those through whom, if not by whom, this calamity has undoubtedly fallen upon the world, have been recalled to Aeria by the Council, after nearly seven years of exile, to receive reinstatement in their long-forfeited rights of citizenship, but even now they will not reassume those rights unless their welcome home is unanimous. Therefore, while their ships are still outside our mountains, if any citizen of Aeria has, even at this eleventh hour, any reason to give why they should not be permitted to recross the barriers which separate us from the rest of the world, let him or her come forward now and state it.”

He ceased, and for a few moments there was perfect silence throughout the vast congregation. Not a man or woman moved or spoke, and all eyes were turned on the President, waiting for him to speak again. In a voice whose now unrestrained emotion contrasted strongly with the former impassiveness of his tones he said—

“Then their welcom............