The millions upon millions of worlds which keep the mystery of their being veiled from humanity flashed upon her eyes and moved her mind to a profound sadness.
"What is the use of it all!" she thought--"If one could only find the purpose of this amazing creation! We learn a very little, only to see how much more there is to know! We live our lives, all hoping, searching, praying--and never an answer comes for all our prayers! From the very beginning--not a word from the mysterious Poet who has written the Poem! We are to breed and die--and there an end!--it seems strange and cruel, because so purposeless! Or is it our fault?
Do we fail to discover the things we ought to know ?" So she mused, while her "White Eagle" ship sailed serenely on with a leisurely, majestic motion through a seeming wilderness of stars.
Courageous as she was, with a veritable lion-heart beating in her delicate little body, and firm as was her resolve to discover what no woman had ever discovered before, to-night she was conscious of actual fear.

Something--she knew not what--crept with a compelling influence through her blood,--she felt that some mysterious force she had never reckoned with was insidiously surrounding her with an invisible ring.
She called to Rivardi-- "Are we not flying too high?
Have you altered the course ?" "No, Madama," he replied at once--"We are on the same level." She turned towards him.

Her face was very pale.
"Well--be careful! To my mind we seem to be in a new atmosphere--there is a sensation of greater tension in the air--or--it is my fancy.

We must not be too adventurous,--we must avoid the Great Nebula in Orion for example!" "Madama, you jest! We are trillions upon trillions of miles distant from any great constellation--" "Do I not know it?
You are too literal, Marchese! Of course I jest--you could not suppose me to be in earnest! But I am sure we are passing through the waves of a new ether--not altogether suited to the average human being.

The average human being is not made to inhabit the higher spaces of the upper air--hark!--What was that ?" She held up a warning hand, and listened.