“What, then, was the beverage? If one is permitted to ask,” Stephen persisted meekly.
“Cream—when I could get it. I do love cream.”
The physician groaned. “I wonder,” he said severely, “that instead of dreaming of flying you did not in reality fly.”
She giggled, and helped herself to a macaroon, still standing on the hearthrug, facing them. “Oh, I knew a lovely poem once—we all had to learn it by heart at school—probably you did too?”
“I think it highly improbable,” Latham protested.
“I am positive I did not,” Pryde asserted.
“Not learn to recite ‘Darius Green and His Flying Machine’! My, you do neglect your children in this country. You poor things! I wonder if I can remember it and say it to you.”
She clasped her hands behind her back and faced them with dancing eyes. “‘Darius Green and His Flying Machine,’” she declaimed solemnly. And very solemnly, but with now and then a punctuation point of giggle, she recited in its entirety the absurd classic which has played no inconspicuous part in the transatlantic curriculum. Her beautiful Creole voice, now pathetic and velvet, now lifted as the wing of a bird in flight, her face dimpling till even Stephen was bewitched, and Latham could have kissed it, and might have been tempted to essay the enterprise had only they been alone. Richard Bransby, whose fond fancy had compared the women of his love each to some distinct flower, might have thought her like some rich magnolia of her own South as she swayed and postured in the gleaming firelight. But perhaps all beautiful women are rather flower-like.
She ended the performance with a shiver and sigh of elation. “Oh, isn’t it a love of a poem? Have some more tea.”
Stephen came to see Mrs. Hilary not infrequently. She liked him genuinely, and her liking soothed and helped him. He was terribly restless often. Never once had he repented. He had loved Hugh, and loved him still. He would have given a great deal to have known where he was, and to have helped him. He would have given far more to know that the brother would never come back—come back to thwart him of Helen—perhaps to expose him of crime. He loved Hugh and he mourned him; but two things to him were paramount: to make Helen his wife, and to be an “Air-King.” One goal was in sight, the other he could not, and would not, relinquish. And to gain these two great desires, soul-desires both, he would hesitate at nothing, regret nothing, and least of all their cost to any other, no matter how dear to him that other, no matter how terrible that cost.