Sanson’s gaze shifted from my face to Esther’s, and, as if she felt the man’s presence, she stirred, and her eyelids unclosed.
“Arnold!” she whispered.
“Yes, dear,” I answered, bending over her.
“I dreamed that—they had run up the annex thirty stories, Arnold, and painted it shining white.”
“You must sleep and dream no more,” I told her. She murmured and her eyelids closed. Again the kindly unconsciousness of sleep held her.
I placed her against the anchored airplane and turned to Sanson. He was facing me with that strange and half-quizzical look that I remembered so well. It had in it more of humanity than the expression of any other of his moods.
“Arnold,” he said softly, “if I were an ignorant man I might be tempted to believe that there is a God, sometimes.”
And that was his way also, to speak of other things in moments of imminent alarm.
“Why?” I inquired.
“Because He is so merciful to His defectives, Arnold. To think that you, with your missing five centimeters, should have defeated me!