“Mr. Bayne!”

It was Miss Falconer’s voice.  I rose reluctantly and obeyed the summons.  The Firefly was sitting propped on the chest, white, but steadier, while Esme still knelt beside him, holding his hand in hers.

“I have been telling Jean, Mr. Bayne, how you have helped us.”  The radiance of her face, the lilt of her voice, stabbed me with a jealous pang.  I wanted to see her happy, Heaven knew, but not quite in this manner.  “And he wants to thank you for all that you have done.”

The Duke of Raincy-la-Tour spoke to me in English that was correct, but quaintly formal, of a decided charm.

“Monsieur,” he said, “I offer you my gratitude.  And if you will touch the hand of one concerning whom, I fear, very evil things are believed—­”

I forced a smile and a hearty pressure.

“I’ll risk it,” I assured him.  “The chain of evidence against you seemed far-fetched to say the least.  They pointed out accusingly that your father and your grandfather had been royalists, and that therefore—­”

He made a gesture.

“May their souls find repose!  Monsieur, it is true that they were.  But if they lived to-day, my father and grandfather, they would not be traitors.  They would wear, like me, the uniform of France.”

He smiled, and I knew once for all that I could never hate him; that mere envy and a shame of it were the worst that I could feel.  Everything about him won me, his simplicity, his fine pride, his clearness of eye and voice, his look of a swift, polished sword blade.  I had never seen a man like him.  The Duchess of Raincy-la-Tour would be a lucky woman; so much was plain.

I found a seat on the window ledge, the girl remained kneeling by him, and he told us his story, always in that quaint, formal speech.  As it went on it absorbed me.  I even forgot those clasped hands for an occasional instant.  In every detail, in every quiet sentence, there was some note that brought before me the Firefly’s achievements, the marauding airships he had climbed into the air to meet, the foes he had swooped from the blue to conquer, his darts into the land of his enemies where there was a price upon his head.

The story had to do with a night when he had left the French lines behind him.  His commander had been quite frank.  The mission meant his probable death.  He was to wear a German uniform; to land inside the lines of the kaiser, to conceal his plane, if luck favored him, among the trees in the grounds of the old chateau of Ranceville; to get what knowledge and sketch what plans he could of defenses against which the French attacks had hitherto broken vainly, and to bring them home.

All had gone well at first.  His gallant little plane had winged its way into the unknown like a darting swallow; he had landed safely; and after he had walked for hours with the Germans about him and death beside him, he had gained his spoils.  It was as he rose for the return flight that the alarm was given.  He got away; but he had five hostile aircraft after him.  Could he hope to elude them and to land safely at the French lines?