ould tell. I shirked the longer road.

And it robbed me, too, of any fine perception of absurdity.

Yet that was not everything in our relationship. The elemental thing was
there also. It came in very suddenly.

It was one day in the summer, though I do not now recall without
reference to my experimental memoranda whether it was in July or
August. I was working with a new and more bird-like aeroplane with wing
curvatures studied from Lilienthal, Pilcher and Phillips, that I
thought would give a different rhythm for the pitching oscillations than
anything I'd had before. I was soaring my long course from the framework
on the old barrow by my sheds down to Tinker's Corner. It is a clear
stretch of downland, except for two or three thickets of box and thorn
to the right of my course; one transverse trough, in which there is bush
and a small rabbit warren, comes in from the east. I had started,
and was very intent on the peculiar long swoop with which any new
arrangement flew. Then, without any sort of notice, right ahead of me
appeared Beatrice, riding towards Tinker's Corner to waylay and talk to
me. She looked round over her shoulder, saw me coming, touched her
horse to a gallop, and then the brute bolted right into the path of my
machine.

There was a queer moment of doubt whether we shouldn't all smash
together. I had to make up my mind very quickly whether I would pitch-up
and drop backward at once and take my chance of falling undamaged--a
poor chance it would have been--in order to avoid any risk to her, or
whether I would lift against the wind and soar right over her. This
latter I did. She had already got her horse in hand when I came up to
her. Her woman's body lay along his neck, and she glanced up as I, with
wings aspread, and every nerve in a state of tension, swept over her.

Then I had landed, and was going back to where her horse stood still and
trembling.

We exchanged no greetings. She slid from her saddle into my arms, and
for one instant I held her.

"Those great wings," she said, and that was all.

She lay in my arms, and I thought for a moment she had fainted.

"Very near a nasty accident," said Cothope, coming up and regarding
our grouping with disfavour. He took her horse by the bridle. "Very
dangerous thing coming across us like that."

Beatrice disengaged herself from me, stood for a moment trembling, and
then sat down on the turf "I'll just sit down for a moment," she said.

"Oh!" sh