mbing 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, rubicund angel
in a panama hat and a pepper-and-salt tweed suit holding out a
lifebelt. Cousin Christopher would take to Malvina as some motherly
hen to an orphaned duckling. A fairy discovered asleep beside one of
the ancient menhirs of Brittany. His only fear would be that you might
want to take her away before he had written a paper about her. He
would be down from Oxford at his cottage. Commander Raffleton could not
for the moment remember the name of the village. It would come to him.
It was northwest of Newbury. You crossed Salisbury Plain and made
straight for Magdalen Tower. The Downs reached almost to the orchard
gate. There was a level stretch of sward nearly half a mile long. It
seemed to Commander Raffleton that Cousin Christopher had been created
and carefully preserved by Providence for this particular job.

He was no longer the moonstruck youth of the previous night, on whom
phantasy and imagination could play what pranks they chose. That part
of him the keen, fresh morning air had driven back into its cell. He
was Commander Raffleton, an eager and alert young engineer with all his
wits about him. At this point that has to be remembered. Descending
on a lonely reach of shore he proceeded to again disturb Malvina for
the purpose of extracting tins. He expected his passenger would in
broad daylight prove to be a pretty, childish-looking girl, somewhat
dishevelled, with, maybe, a tinge of blue about the nose, the natural
result of a three-hours' flight at fifty miles an hour. It was with a
startling return of his original sensations when first she had come to
life beneath his kiss that he halted a few feet away and stared at her.
The night was gone, and the silence. She stood there facing the
sunlight, clad in a Burberry overcoat half a dozen sizes too large for
her. Beyond her was a row of bathing-machines, and beyond that again a
ga