experiences of Flight Commander Raffleton and was now about to enter
on a new and less circumscribed existence. If so, the beginning, to
an adventuresome young spirit, seemed promising. It was Malvina's
voice that recalled him from this train of musing.

"Shall we go?" she repeated, and this time the note in her voice
suggested command rather than question.

Why not? Whatever had happened to him, at whatever plane of
existence he was now arrived, the machine apparently had followed
him. Mechanically he started it up. The familiar whir of the
engine brought back to him the possibility of his being alive in the
ordinary acceptation of the term. It also suggested to him the
practical advisability of insisting that Malvina should put on his
spare coat. Malvina being five feet three, and the coat having been
built for a man of six feet one, the effect under ordinary
circumstances would have been comic. What finally convinced
Commander Raffleton that Malvina really was a fairy was that, in
that coat, with the collar standing up some six inches above her
head, she looked more like one than ever.

Neither of them spoke. Somehow it did not seem to be needed. He
helped her to climb into her seat and tucked the coat about her
feet. She answered by the same smile with which she had first
stretched out her hand to him. It was just a smile of endless
content, as if all her troubles were now over. Commander Raffleton
sincerely hoped they were. A momentary flash of intelligence
suggested to him that his were just beginning.

Commander Raffleton's subconscious self it must have been that took