“I must fly high,” he replied. “It is an irresistible fascination, a necessity. Above my two wings, I possess the infinite. The air surrounds me, bathes me, caresses me, as this water does our boat. I forget the noise of the motor, the buzzing of the propeller. Energy clamours within me. My wings shift about, like extended arms, to ensure control. A horseman is no more one with his living mount than I am with my machine. I experience a new calm, a peace like that of religion. She is with me, she does not speak, she smiles. She is no longer a victim of the fear that paralysed her on earth. It is just as if I were carrying her to her heaven. I am quite sure that I shall never again cause her any harm. As long as my flight lasts, I am scarcely a separate being from her. Between my suspended life and her invisible one, there is no longer anything but a thin veil.--But we fly too seldom. The machines need incessant repairing.” In the very act of describing his sensations to me, he had forgotten me. It was to himself, rather than to me, that he continued: “Some wood and linen, a little steel, and a few wires, and you have an arrow with which to cleave the air. It is not complicated. And yet, how much study, how much preparation and effort in order to fly a few hours, a few hours without touching earth, while we do not take the trouble to learn to know a soul which trusts itself to us, which would carry us equally high in life, if we understood it.” Expressed though it was in incoherent phrases, his exaltation won me, and I begged him some day to take me with him. But he refused with unexpected violence. “Do not ask me that. I have never carried a single passenger. My solitude is necessary to me, the comforting solitude of space. The Rheims woman asked me to take her. She wished to drive away the _other_. Ah, I used to think that some day I would break my wings while in full flight. It would have been a good end, and so easy, nothing but the cutting of a rope. Nobody would have suspected. But it is impossible. It would mean betraying the machine, allowing a false suspicion to rest upon it. It can play false: the man it carries--no.” I laid down the oars. He had already abandoned the rudder, and we drifted with the current. Seated in the back of the boat, he stared down at our wake. Thoughts of death or madness accompanied us like sombre birds. From that moment I began to alter my opinion of the intensity of his memories, in which remorse for some crime showed itself clearly. We returned almost in silence. I had not dared to question him and he was absorbed in himself. * * *