"There!" Duncan exclaimed quickly, before Milly could collect an appropriate remark. "He's coming down!" Speechless they both craned their heads backwards to follow the aeroplane. The airman, tired of his lofty wandering, or having done the day's stunt required of him, had begun to descend and shot rapidly towards the spectators out of the sky. As he came nearer the earth, he executed the reckless corkscrew man[oe]uvre: the great winged machine seemed to be rushing, tumbling in a perpendicular line just above the heads of the gazing crowd. There was an agonized murmur, a prolonged,--"Ah!" It gave Milly delicious thrills up and down her body. When the airman took another leap towards earth, her heart stopped beating altogether. With only a few hundred feet between him and the earth the airman turned his planes and began circling in slow curves over the adjacent strip of park, as if he were judiciously selecting the best spot for alighting. "It doesn't take 'em long to come down!" Duncan remarked, and Milly, with a swift mental comparison of the aeroplane flight and her own little fate, replied,-- "It never takes long to come down, does it?" She looked more closely now at her former lover. Apparently his blow had not seriously damaged him. His figure was fuller and his face tanned to a healthier color than she remembered. He seemed to be in good spirits, and not perceptibly older than he was ten years before. They descended the steps with the moving throng and strolled slowly up the crowded boulevard, watching the distant flights and talking. Edgar Duncan, she learned, had not spent the ten years nursing a wounded heart. He had doubled the acreage of his ranch, he told her, and thanks to the fatherly government at Washington, which had trebled the duty on foreign lemons, he was doing very well indeed. The big yellow balls among the glossy leaves were fast becoming golden balls. He was now on his way east to see his people and also to look after the interests of a fruit-growers' association in the matter of a railroad rate on lemons. He seemed very much alive. The blow had probably done him good, Milly concluded,--had waked him up. There were a few hours between his trains, he explained to Milly, and so he had wandered over to the park to watch the aeroplanes, which were the first of the bird machines he had ever seen. It was almost time now for him to leave. But he lost that Washington train. For he walked home with Milly to see her little girl, stayed to luncheon, and was still at the house telling Virginia about real oranges on real orange trees when Ernestine came in. She was hot and tired, evidently much disturbed, and more than usually short with Milly's guest. Duncan left soon afterwards, and then Milly asked,-- "What's the matter, Ernestine?" "I'd think you'd know!... If we can't get a cook, we might as well shut up the shop to-morrow."