"What a lovely world!" said Zaidie, as she at last found her voice after
what was almost a stupor of speechless wonder and admiration. "And the
light! Did you ever see anything like it? It's neither moonlight nor
sunlight. See, there are no shadows down there, it's just all lovely
silvery twilight. Lenox, if Venus is as nice as she looks from here I
don't think I shall want to go back. It reminds me of Tennyson's Lotus
Eaters, 'the Land where it is always afternoon.'
"I think you are right after all. We are thirty million miles nearer to
the Sun than we were on the Earth, and the light and heat have to filter
through those clouds. They are not at all like Earth clouds from this
side. It's the other way about. The silver lining is on this side. Look,
there isn't a black or a brown one, or even a grey one, within sight.
They are just like a thin mist, lighted by a million of electric lamps.
It's a delicious world, and if it isn't inhabited by angels it ought to
be."
CHAPTER XIII
While Zaidie was talking the _Astronef_ was sweeping swiftly down
towards the surface of Venus, through scenery of whose almost
inconceivable magnificence no human words could convey any adequate
idea. Underneath the cloud-veil the air was absolutely clear and
transparent, clearer, indeed, than terrestrial air at the highest
elevations reached by mountain-climbers, and, moreover, it seemed to be
endowed with a strange, luminous quality, which made objects, no matter
how distant, stand out with almost startling distinctness.
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