Then a number of things seemed to happen very quickly.
The first of these was a sharp "Ping!" on one of the aluminium stays. Gwenna found herself gazing blankly at the round hole in the wing a yard to the right of her. The next thing was that the fog—mist—or cloud, had disappeared. All was clear sky about them once more. The third thing was that, hardly a stone's toss away, and only missed by a miracle in the cloud, they saw the monoplane and the aviator in her.
He was bareheaded, for that blind, wild shot of the British girl's had stripped away his head-covering, and there was a trickle of scarlet down his cheek. His hair was a gilded stubble, his eyes hard and blue and Teutonic. His flying-gear was buttoned plastron-wise above his chest, just as that white linen jacket of his had been; and Karl Becker, waiter, spy and aviator, gave a little nod, as much as to say that he recognised that they were meeting not for the first time....
One glimpse showed all this. The next instant both German and Englishman had turned to avoid the imminent collision. But the German did more than turn.
He had been fired on and hit; now was his shot. Dampier, with no thought now but to get his wife out of danger, crowded the biplane on. As the machines missed one another by hardly ten feet, she heard the four cracks of Paul's revolver.
Little Gwenna thought she had never heard anything so fascinating, horrible, and sweet. He was fighting not for his own life only. And he was not now being fired at, far from her, hoping that she need never know. For she also, she was in danger with him; she who did not want to die before him but who would not wish to live for one moment after him.
Moments? When every moment was a whole life, what could be more perilously, unimaginedly sweet than this?
"I knew I had to come," she gasped to herself. "Never away from him again! Never——"
Her heart was racing like the propeller itself with just such speed, such power. More love than it could bear was crowded into every throb of it. For one more of those moments that were more than years she must look at him and see him look at her....
One look!