“Well—” he rose. “I’ll be going. Got a lot of work to do. No more waltz tonight.”
“No—no more waltz!” Florence looked up at her imitation moon. She was disappointed and unhappy. She had pictured that last dance as something unusual and beautiful.
“Your Hugo is attractive at any rate,” she said to Danby.
Just at that moment Hugo went whirling by. He was dancing with Ina Piccalo, the dark-eyed girl who had carried away the dye.
“She’s wearing a purple dress,” Florence said to herself, “the very shade that was in the ink bottle. I wonder—” she was to wonder many times.
It was not many hours after Florence had returned to her small room in the bird-cage cottage, when Jeanne, in quite a different part of the country, started on her strange flight following the small silver plane.
“What can have happened?” Madame Bihari asked herself in utter astonishment as she watched the two planes, like homing pigeons, rapidly disappearing into the distance.
That which had happened was truly very simple. As Jeanne, after taxiing down the field, came in sight of that silver plane, she caught sight of a tall dark figure just entering the plane. One look was enough. Her lips parted in sudden surprise as she hissed under her breath: “The dark lady! The spy!”
She was about to spring from her place when the silver plane, whose propeller had been slowly revolving, started gliding away. There was nothing left but to follow.
Jeanne followed, not alone on the ground, but in the air. And did she follow? Miles and miles the two planes roared on. Perhaps some early milkman, looking up at the sky, wondered where they were going. Jeanne wondered also, but not once did she think of turning back. In her mind’s eye, she could see the earnest look on Danby’s face. She could picture his happy little city and her friend Florence working there.