d him in French, a quaint, old-fashioned
French such as one rarely finds but in the pages of old missals. He
would have had some difficulty in translating it literally, but the
meaning of it was, adapted to our modern idiom:

"Don't mention it. I'm so glad you've come."

He gathered she had been expecting him. He was not quite sure whether
he ought not to apologise for being apparently a little late. True, he
had no recollection of any such appointment. But then at that
particular moment Commander Raffleton may be said to have had no
consciousness of anything beyond just himself and the wondrous other
beside him. Somewhere outside was moonlight and a world; but all that
seemed unimportant. It was she who broke the silence.

"How did you get here?" she asked.

He did not mean to be enigmatical. He was chiefly concerned with still
gazing at her.

"I flew here," he answered. Her eyes opened wider at that, but with
interest, not doubt.

"Where are your wings?" she asked. She was leaning sideways, trying to
get a view of his back.

He laughed. It made her seem more human, that curiosity about his back.

"Over there," he answered. She looked, and for the first time saw the
great shimmering sails gleaming like silver under the moonlight.

She moved towards it, and he followed, noticing without surprise that
the heather seemed to make no sign of yielding to the pressure of her
white feet.

She halted a little away from it, and he came and stood beside her.
Even to Commander Raffleton himself it looked as if the great wings
were quivering, like the outstretched pinions of a bird preening itself
before flight.

"Is it alive?" she asked.

"Not till I whisper to it," he answered. He was losing a little of his
fear of her. She turned to him.

"Shall we go?" she asked.

He stared at her. She was quite serious, that was evident. She was to
put her hand in his and go away with him. It was all settled. That is
why he had come. To her it did not matter where. That was his affair.
But where he went she was to go. That was quite clearly the programme
in her mind.

To his credit, let it be recorded, he did make an effort. Against all
the forces of nature, against his twenty-three years and the red blood
pulsing in his veins, against the fumes of the midsummer moonlight
encompassing him and the voices of the stars, against the demons of
poetry and romance and mystery chanting their witches' music in h