She stopped, drew nearer to him by a step, and let her eyes plead with him.
Like was pleading with like. Her soul called to a soul that was its complement, its counterpart. It could not but understand. Normal considerations failed; nothing about their situation was normal. Potter himself was uplifted, breathing an ether finer, more rarified, more exhilarating than air.... He was not a plodding man of the workaday world that night, but an eager, restless, headlong-questing soul of high adventure.... He understood her; her mood was clear to him. Why should he refuse to her soul what he was demanding for his own?
He bent over her and kissed her, not with the kiss of a lover, but with the kiss of an ascetic. “Come,” he said.
She thanked him silently. “Now?” she asked.
He nodded.
Together they opened the wide doors. In another moment there burst upon them the thunderous roar of the powerful motor, his motor, his country’s motor that was to carry her to victory in her battle to free the world from hideous blackness.
He helped her to her seat, and mounted to his own. In another moment they were moving out upon their quest.
CHAPTER XXVIII
They mounted swiftly into the face of the moon, higher, ever higher. Beneath them lay a cold world making ready for sleep. Behind them glowed the lights of the city, of the city going about its affairs, unconscious of the calamity that threatened. Richly gowned men and women occupied theater chairs; cafés, restaurants with their gaudy cabarets, were preparing to receive their guests. Lights were blinking out in the homes of working-men and of millionaire as the inmates retired, conscious of security, for the night. In many homes were dancing and gaiety; in other homes—a scattering few—nightly family prayers were being said. As on any other nights, the down-town streets were quick with moving motor-cars, or black with automobiles parked and waiting until their owners should issue from theater, from club, from innocent amusement, or from squalid place of license and artificial joy.
Detroit lay spread out in great panorama, sleeping, spending, each inhabitant flying high or flying low, according to his means and his desires ... all defenseless against the thing that threatened; defenseless save for that frail craft of the air that mounted and mounted on fragile wings until it was but a speck against the illuminated heavens!