aeroplane does not go about unnoticed. Wasn't there a law about
this sort of thing--something about "decoying" and "young girls"?
He hadn't "decoyed" her. If anything, it was the other way about.
But would her consent be a valid defence? How old was she? That
would be the question. In reality he supposed about a thousand
years or so. Possibly more. Unfortunately, she didn't look it. A
coldly suspicious magistrate would probably consider sixteen a much
better guess. Quite possibly he was going to get into a devil of a
mess over this business. He cast a glance behind him. Malvina
responded with her changeless smile of ineffable content. For the
first time it caused him a distinct feeling of irritation.

They were almost over Weymouth by this time. He could read plainly
the advertisement posters outside the cinema theatre facing the
esplanade: "Wilkins and the Mermaid. Comic Drama." There was a
picture of the lady combing her hair; also of Wilkins, a stoutish
gentleman in striped bathing costume.

That mad impulse that had come to him with the first breath of dawn,
to shake the dwindling world from his pinions, to plunge upward
towards the stars never to return--he wished to Heaven he had
yielded to it.

And then suddenly there leapt to him the thought of Cousin
Christopher.


Dear old Cousin Christopher, fifty-eight and a bachelor. Why had it
not occurred to him before? Out of the sky there appeared to
Commander Raffleton the vision of "Cousin Christopher" as a plump,