She went out of the room.

Later they made it up. Edward took refuge behind exaggerated surrender. It was his liver. It was the mistral. He hadn’t meant a word. She shook her head sadly:

“No, my dear. Don’t say all that. You did mean some of it.”

There was a pause, and she added:

“And perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I sometimes am a bit—possessive.”

He protested. She said:

“I sometimes wonder if all this is workable. The way we live.”

“It’s worked, hasn’t it?”

She smiled sadly.

“Has it?”

“You mean, for you, it hasn’t?”

“Oh, I’m satisfied,” she answered quickly.

“Then you oughtn’t to be,” was on the tip of his tongue. He didn’t say it. Like a coward he avoided, as always, the final issue between them. That evening they were gentle with each other, but sad. He was polite and she accepted it. Next morning she told him that she was going to England in a few days’ time. As before, she spared him the unpleasantness of being the one to make the move.

*   *   *

“I believe I have overcome this difficulties,” said the young Dutchman, in his incorrect conclusive English, tapping the ash from a small cigar and glancing without interest across the Place de l’Opéra. He was pale and rather stout. Edward nodded seriously and ordered another absinthe. The Dutchman drank only lemonade.

A week later they had left Paris. The experiments were being made at a village not far from Beauvais. The Dutchman had invented a new type of aeroplane engine. He was working as cheaply as possible, but had run out of cash. It was only a matter of a few hundreds. Edward telegraphed to his bank. To Margaret he’d written in a mood of unashamed enthusiasm: “I really believe that this is the genuine Resurrection from the Dead. It’s extraordinary, after all these years, to be of some slight use. I only wish I hadn’t forgotten all the engineering I ever knew. But even that is coming back by degrees.”

Margaret answered warmly, handsomely. He could read between the lines that she was anxious. But she talked gaily of the future. Perhaps Edward would be quite famous.

Everything went splendidly. The French Government was interested. The experts were coming to visit them in a few weeks’ time. Two or three reporters appeared, lurked about for a day or two, and were finally driven off, disappointed. The days passed quickly in long hours of work, in discussions, in trial flights. Edward found that his nerve hadn’t gone. He was cutting down his drinking. He felt ten years younger.