Potter appeared in the doorway and stopped abruptly as his eyes found her. It was the sincerest tribute. He felt as if some potent current had darted out from her to touch him with its mysterious force--almost as if it arrested his heart an instant and made it skip a beat.... That was the way she looked; not dazzlingly beautiful; the effect was not that of beauty, but of something more compelling, more thrilling. It was rather as if Youth in person advanced to meet him--throbbing, eager, glowing Youth; neither masculine nor feminine, but the personification of everything young, ardent, breathless, fearless. "I'm early," she said, "but I _had_ to come. I hardly slept all night for thinking about it." He advanced, finding that he very much wanted to take her hand, and she looked up into his face and laughed impishly, for it was plain reading to her that she had startled this young man and unsettled his equilibrium. "Come in," he said, rather stupidly. "We've been tinkering, but we're nearly ready now, I guess." He knew it was hardly the thing to say to such a magical creature, but it was the best he could do. She walked to the machine and patted the tip of its wing. "We're going to be friends, aren't we?" she said to it, and smiled up at Potter again. "How do I get in? Where do I sit?" Her voice was eager. It had been in his mind before she came to try to persuade her against the flight; to show her the inadvisability of it, especially in the face of her father's attitude toward him. He did not make the effort now. It seemed futile, not to be considered, so he helped her to her place silently. "Ready?" he asked one of the men in overalls who were going fussily about the 'plane, touching wires, testing braces. "Ready, sir." Potter looked at Hildegarde. No trace of fear or nervousness was visible, nor was she calm. Her eyes danced with excitement, her face was alight with gay eagerness. "I don't suppose I could drive it, could I?" she asked. "Well, _hardly_," Potter said. "I'd love to. I'm sure I could." "This is your excursion," he said, disregarding her manifest desire to become pilot of the craft. "What part of the earth shall we fly over?" "It's to be a good, long fly, you know," she said. "Not just up and down like those twenty-five-dollars-a-ride things we had here last year. I want to go miles and miles.... Let's go right across the lake to the Flats and then swing around and come home over Mount Clemens. Can we do that?" "I have made that circle." "What do I do?" "Sit still and hang on. There's no promenade-deck to this ship--no orchestra and no dancing." "Are you a dancing-man?" "Far from it. The _thé dansant_ is too dangerous for me. I don't speak the language." "I _love_ to dance," she said. "I don't know that the language is more difficult than the one you speak while we dance on the floor above. 'Waiter, another round of cocktails.'"