helsea
would die--without ever knowing of the cup of bliss she was now ready,
with utterly loving hand, to hold to his lips.

Having sent her message, there was nothing more she could do, and the
burden of inaction seemed almost too great a weight to carry, during
the hours which must elapse, before his coming could turn uncertainty
into assurance; restlessness, into peace.

It did not occur to her, as a possibility, that Guy Chelsea would elect
to fly, after receiving her request. She knew her slightest wish would
be law to the Boy's tender loyalty; and though he knew nothing of her
cause for anxiety, nor of the complete change of circumstances since he
left her, not forty-eight hours before, she felt sure he would not fly;
she felt certain he would come--if--_if_ the message reached him in
time.

At two o'clock it came to her, with overwhelming certainty, that her
message had not reached him, and that he had started on his flight.
She seemed to see the great wings mounting--mounting; then skimming
over the sea. She almost heard the hum he had so often described--the
hum of the giant insect on which the bird-man flew.

Her own Little Boy Blue was flying through space. O God, what might
not any minute be bringing! He had said: "One never expects those
things to happen, and when they do happen, it's over so quickly that
there is no time for expectation." Was it happening now? Was it going
to be over so quickly, that her cup of bliss would be dashed from her
lips untasted? Was she to lose her all, because of a cross-current or
a twisted wire?

She was walking up and down the garden now, and paused beside the chair
in which she had sat when he had said, only seven days ago: "It was
always you I wanted; not your niece. Good heavens! How can you have
thought it was Mollie, when it was you--you--just only you, all the
time?" And she, half-laughing at him, had asked: "Is this a proposal?"

"My ALL," she said. "Oh, Boy dear, my ALL. If I lose you, I lose my
ALL."

She walked on slowly, moving to the repetition of those words. It
seemed a comfort to repeat the great fact that, at last, he was this to
her. Surely it would reach him, by some sort of wireless telegraphy
through space. Surely it would control cross-currents, keep propellers
acting as they should; steering-gear from twisting.

"O God, he is my ALL--he is my ALL!"

* * * * *

The afternoon sun began to glint throug