"Meaning that you refuse to let me ascend?"
"Most categorically!"
"But why?" he demanded. "Do you want Miss Warren to think that I was only bluffing, after all? I promised to show her something startling, and I'm going ahead with it."
"To begin with, it would be suicide," I rejoined. "In addition, you would be inflicting gratuitous distress upon mademoiselle."
At this he rose from his seat with the first sign of emotion I had seen in his manner.
"And what is it that she has inflicted for months on me?" he demanded hotly. "And on her father, too, and on all her friends? We can't pick up a newspaper any day, without going cold with fear that we will read of her maimed or dead in some accident. After all, it's only her own medicine."
He took off the black leather helmet, placed it on the seat, and wiped the motor grease from his brow. When he spoke again, it was in the even tones of a man who issues an ultimatum against an intolerable situation.
"There has been altogether too much of this flying business. It's no game for a girl. There is getting to be too much of this count thing. We don't want his sort around here. I've known Ella Warren since she was as big as a glass of milk! Do you think I am going to stand down for the first scented dago—forgive me if I speak disrespectfully of your countryman—whom she chooses to bring across the Atlantic at her heels? No, sir! It has to be stopped somewhere."
He halted a moment, and regarded me carefully. I could see that he was measuring with his eye the distance between us.
"I'm going to scare her stiff," he said, nodding. "Get down off this plane, Monsieur Lacroix!"