His melancholy face gave way to a boyish grin. "If he did, mademoiselle, my ghost would haunt him forever. All night it would sing outside his window—and, in truth, my singing is no less terrible than his."
There was another roar, followed by a reference to the untimely decease of ten thousand devils.
Without a word, she reached for her book, and, throwing her shawl over her left shoulder, hurried away. The aviator watched her girlish figure with its unconscious grace, then, turning about, he strolled to the machine, and, sitting on the side of the fuselage, surveyed its bullet-punctured carcass.
"Five kilometers and a little better," he soliloquized in English, "and a doubtful prospect of a meal…. Contrast that with what the gods offer here—a cosy fire, coffee, eggs and chips, I warrant, and the daintiest of little maids—to say nothing of a musical uncle with an amiable propensity for throwing visitors into the stream. By Jove, it is chilly…. Over in dear old England they'll be roasting nuts and telling ghost-stories to-night."
The fast-thickening shadows deepened into the blackness of an October night; the wind grew quieter, but there was a bite in the air that made him draw his fur collar about his ears.
"What excellent French the little lady uses," he went on. "I wonder who her parents were, and why the deuce she has to live with this ogre. And what eyes! Enough to make one invent new songs of Araby just to see them sparkle and soften…. One moment sad, another tender—and always lovely. Steady, the Air Force—you're becoming sentimental."
He looked at the battered machine and shook his head; a solitary raindrop lit on his face and slid down its surface like a tear.
A belated gust of wind smote his face and left it moist. He rose in a determined manner and adjusted his helmet.
"Adieu, my Camel!" He took a last survey of the machine. "The kitchen is calling to my appetite; a storm is brewing in the heavens; a pair of dark eyes is urging all the romance within me; so—mill-stream or no mill-stream—mon oncle, I come."
He squared his shoulders and, with the rather absurd long stride and the odd raising of the knee, made for the cottage door, from underneath which a faint glow of light was timidly emerging.