oke you played on me with
the black casquette, you know. They carried us away in the same auto,
and they tell me that I looked as lifeless as you."

"And now I have lost my pupil!" I exclaimed ruefully.

"Dear Monsieur Lacroix, I had no choice," she responded, and moved to
the bedside and held my hand. "I cannot oppose the wishes of all the
people I love. Besides, it is a fair bargain. We have promised each
other, Mr. Power and I, never to fly again."

"It is in one way a pity," I murmured. "For monsieur is without
doubt a species of born birdman. But any one would make a parallel
renunciation to stand in his shoes."

"You are dangerously romantic, Monsieur Jules," said mademoiselle. "If
it were not your supreme virtue, it would be your principal fault."

"Too true, mademoiselle," I replied. "But it cannot be denied that I
am at the same time a very pretty flier."

It was not until some time after they had departed that I found upon
the table among my medicines two envelopes. One, small and dainty, was
a formal announcement of the fiancailles of Miss Warren and the
young Monsieur Power. The other, long and of an official shape,
contained--ah, what do you guess?

It was a draft of the incorporation of a company to control my flying
schools, and realize my dream of the all-steel monoplane of stability
positively automatic. At the head I read the names of Messieurs Warren
and Power as guarantors. There remain only blank spaces requiring my
signature.

_Bien alors_! In a few days more I shall be able to hold a pen!

CHEAP

BY MARJORIE L.C. PICKTHALL

Ransome said that you might pick up specimens of all the unprettiest
afflictions of body and soul in Herares ten years ago. He also said
that when he saw any particularly miserable bit of human wreckage,
white or brown, adrift on the languid tides of life about the jetty,
he always said without further inquiry, "It's Henkel's house you're
looking for. Turn to the left, and keep on turning to the left. And if
God knew what went on under these trees. He'd have mercy on you."

The house was the last house on the last road of the town. You don't
find it now, for no one would live in it after Henkel; and in a season
or two the forest had swamped it as the sea swamps a child's boat on
the beach. It was a white house in a garden, and after rain the scent
of vanilla and stephanotis rose round it like a fog. The fever rose
round it like a fog, too, and that's why