She rose.  “Victory?”

“What do you mean?” asked Graham.  “Tell me! What?”

“We have driven them out of the under galleries at Norwood, Streatham is afire and burning wildly, and Roehampton is ours. Ours!—­and we have taken the monoplane that lay thereon.”

A shrill bell rang.  An agitated grey-headed man appeared from the room of the Ward Leaders.  “It is all over,” he cried.

“What matters it now that we have Roehampton?  The aeroplanes have been sighted at Boulogne!”

“The Channel!” said the man in yellow.  He calculated swiftly.  “Half an hour.”

“They still have three of the flying stages,” said the old man.

“Those guns?” cried Graham.

“We cannot mount them—­in half an hour.”

“Do you mean they are found?”

“Too late,” said the old man.

“If we could stop them another hour!” cried the man in yellow.

“Nothing can stop them now,” said the old man.  “They have near a hundred aeroplanes in the first fleet.”

“Another hour?” asked Graham.

“To be so near!” said the Ward Leader.  “Now that we have found those guns.  To be so near—.  If once we could get them out upon the roof spaces.”

“How long would that take?” asked Graham suddenly.

“An hour—­certainly.”

“Too late,” cried the Ward Leader, “too late.”

“Is it too late?” said Graham.  “Even now—.  An hour!”

He had suddenly perceived a possibility.  He tried to speak calmly, but his face was white.  “There is are chance.  You said there was a monoplane—?”

“On the Roehampton stage, Sire.”

“Smashed?”

“No.  It is lying crossways to the carrier.  It might be got upon the guides—­easily.  But there is no aeronaut—.”

Graham glanced at the two men and then at Helen.  He spoke after a long pause. “We have no aeronauts?”

“None.”

He turned suddenly to Helen.  His decision was made.  “I must do it.”

“Do what?”

“Go to this flying stage—­to this machine.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am an aeronaut.  After all—.  Those days for which you reproached me were not altogether wasted.”

He turned to the old man in yellow.  “Tell them to put it upon the guides.”

The man in yellow hesitated.

“What do you mean to do?” cried Helen.

“This monoplane—­it is a chance—.”

“You don’t mean—?”

“To fight—­yes.  To fight in the air.  I have thought before—.  A big aeroplane is a clumsy thing.  A resolute man—!”

“But—­never since flying began—­” cried the man in yellow.

“There has been no need.  But now the time has come.  Tell them now—­send them my message—­to put it upon the guides.  I see now something to do.  I see now why I am here!”

The old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow nodded, and hurried out.