“I don’t know, of course.”  Billy spoke with reluctance.  It was evident that he did not enjoy discussing the “quiet one” with Ralph.  “At first my theory was that flying was to her what dancing is to most girls.  But, somehow, it seems to go deeper than that — as if it were art, or even creation.  Anyway, there’s a kind of bi-lateral symmetry about everything she does.”

Billy fell into the habit, each afternoon, of strolling away from the rest, out of sound of their chaff.  On the grassy top of one of the reefs, he found a spot where he could lie comfortably and watch the “quiet one.”  He used to spin long day-dreams there.  She looked so remote far up in the boiling blue, and so strange, that he had an inexplicable sensation of reverence.

Now it was as though, in watching that aerial weaving and interweaving, he were assisting at a religious rite.  He liked it best when the white day-moon was afloat.  If he half-shut his eyes, it seemed to him that she and the moon made twin crescents of foaming silver, twin bubbles of white fire, twin films of fairy gossamer, twin vials that held the very essence of poetry.  Somehow he had always connected her with the moon.  Indeed, in her whiteness, her coldness, her aloofness, she seemed the very sublimation of virginity.  His first secret names for her were Diana and Cynthia.  But there was another quality in her that those names did not include — intellectuality.  His favorite heroes were Julius Caesar and Edwin Booth — a quaint pair, taken in combination.  In the long imaginary conversations which he held with her he addressed her as Julia or Edwina.

Days and days went by and he could discover no sign that she had noticed him.  It was typical of the “damned gentleman” side of Billy that he did not try to attract her attention.  Indeed, his efforts were ever to efface himself.

One afternoon, after a long vigil in which, unaccountably, Julia had not appeared, he started to return to camp.  It was a late twilight and a black, velvety one.  The trees against a darkening curtain of sky had turned to bunches of tangled shadow, the reefs and rocks against the papery white of the sand to smutches and blobs of soot.  Suddenly — and his heart pounded at the sound — the air began to vibrate and thrill.

He stopped short.  He waited.  His breath came fast; the vibration and thrill were coming closer.

He crystallized where he stood.  It scarcely seemed that he breathed.  And then — .

Something white and nebulous came floating out of the dusk towards him.  It became a silver cloud, a white sculptured spirit of the air.  It became an angel, a fairy, a woman — Julia.  She flew not far off, level with his eyes and, as she approached, she slowed her stately flight.  Billy made no movement.  He only stood and waited and watched.  But perhaps never before in his life had his eyes become so transparently the windows of his soul.  Quite as intently, Julia’s eyes, big, gray, and dark-lashed, considered him.  It seemed to Billy that he had never seen in any face so virginally young such a tragic seriousness, nor in any eyes, superficially so calm, such a troubled wonder.