charge of the machine. He seems, keeping a few miles inland, to
have followed the line of the coast to a little south of the Hague
lighthouse. Thereabouts he remembers descending for the purpose of
replenishing his tank. Not having anticipated a passenger, he had
filled up before starting with a spare supply of petrol, an incident
that was fortunate. Malvina appears to have been interested in
watching what she probably regarded as some novel breed of dragon
being nourished from tins extricated from under her feet, but to
have accepted this, together with all other details of the flight,
as in the natural scheme of things. The monster refreshed, tugged,
spurned the ground, and rose again with a roar; and the creeping sea
rushed down.

One has the notion that for Flight Commander Raffleton, as for the
rest of us, there lies in wait to test the heart of him the ugly and
the commonplace. So large a portion of the years will be for him a
business of mean hopes and fears, of sordid struggle, of low cares
and vulgar fret. But also one has the conviction that there will
always remain with him, to make life wonderful, the memory of that
night when, godlike, he rode upon the winds of heaven crowned with
the glory of the world's desire. Now and again he turned his head
to look at her, and still, as ever, her eyes answered him with that
strange deep content that seemed to wrap them both around as with a
garment of immortality. One gathers dimly something of what he felt
from the look that would unconsciously come into his eyes when
speaking of that enchanted journey, from the sudden dumbness with
which the commonplace words would die away upon his lips. Well for
him that his lesser self kept firm hold upon the wheel or maybe a
few broken spars, tossing upon the waves, would have been all that
was left to tell of a promising young aviator who, on a summer night