"I—love—you. Whatever comes, we have—each—other, dear."
He held her tightly, forgetting the sharp pain of his own wound. The crippled Voisin drifted over the battleline and the pilot finally made a safe landing within French territory.
"By Hannah!" exploded Captain Raphael Dexter. "We'll do it to-morrow—at the American embassy—the two couples of us! I'll stand up with you, Frank, and you can stand up with me."
This was some days after the shipmaster had found the wounded couple and had moved heaven and earth to bring them back to Paris on the nearest thing to a special train that money and influence could buy in the French Republic.
Captain Raphael Dexter had just come back to the hotel to Sanderson from one of his frequent calls at the furnished apartment on the Rue di Rivoli, where Miss Roberta Melnotte reigned supreme. For Belinda was resting and recuperating and the small maid had little to do but watch "Mam'selle" do the work.
"She's a mighty tidy craft," Captain Dexter pursued, in the honesty of his heart. "And no Quaker, by Hannah! She just fizzes when she gets on the subject of these Germans. I declare I do like a woman with spunk in her.
"It's hard lines when a man has to go outside his own family and home for excitement. I've always, Frank, been hampered by milk-and-watery womenfolk. My wife and my darters—Prudence, Patience and Penelope—never had enough life in 'em to keep a man awake.
"Now," went on the shipmaster, "if a man had such a wife as this here Mam'selle Roberta would make, by Hannah! he wouldn't have to hunt distraction all over the earth—not by a jugful!"
"If Mademoiselle Roberta and Belinda agree," said the aviator, "I don't see why we can't do as you say, Skipper."