"Yes"—she lifted her grave young eyes—"for France."
Through the open dining-room window Sister Eila watched his departure, smiling her adieux as the two men turned toward her and uncovered.
Then she seated herself by the window sill and rested her cheek on her palm, gazing out at the blue sky with vague, enraptured eyes that saw a vision of beatitude perhaps, perhaps the glimmering aura of an earthly martyrdom, in the summer sunshine.
And possibly a vision less holy invaded her tranquil trance, for she suddenly straightened her young shoulders, picked up the crucifix at her girdle, and gazed upon it rather fixedly.
The color slowly cooled in her cheeks till they were as white as the spotless wimple that framed them in its snowy oval.
After a while rosary and crucifix fell between her relaxing hands, and she looked up at the blue foothills of the Vosges with bluer eyes.
The next moment she sprang to her feet, startled. Over the sparkling hills came sailing through the summer sky a gigantic bird—the most enormous winged creature she had ever beheld. A moment later the high clatter of the aëroplane became audible.
CHAPTER XV
Wheeling in spirals now above the river meadow, the great, man-made bird of prey turned and turned, hanging aloft in the sky like a giant hawk, sweeping in vast circles through the blinding blue, as though searching every clump and tussock in the fields below for some hidden enemy or victim.
Louder and louder came the rattling clatter from the sky, nearer swooped the great plane on wide-stretched wings, until, close to the earth, it seemed to sheer the very grass blades in the meadow, and the deafening racket of its engines echoed and reëchoed, filling the world with outrageous and earsplitting noise.