THE YELLOW DOVE
Rizzio. They suspected him and yet he was going to face them. It was desperate, foolhardy, insane. He would never come back. Not victory, but death—that was what it meant. She ran out to the very edge of the rocks, shrieking his name, but the sounds were lost in the fearful din of the motor below. The explosions echoed and reëchoed in the gorge which seemed to quiver with the volume of sound. Not a head from below was turned up to look at her and she had a sense of her own unimportance in the immensity of Cyril’s viewpoint. She saw the yellow machine start slowly down the incline, gathering momentum as it ran until it left the runway and rose magnificently, its engine roaring steadily, clearing the surf and rocks and heading straight into the growing day.
O God! That she should have suspected him of anything base and dishonorable—a man who could face death as he was doing, as he had been doing for months. Cyril—the Yellow Dove. There could be no doubt of it, for she had seen with her own eyes. She understood now many things that had been a mystery before; why he could not speak to her; the reasons for his occasional absences, for his air of indifference, for his coolness in the face of adverse criticism. She understood about John Rizzio and the reasons why Cyril had wanted her to take such precautions in getting safely back to Ashwater Park, precautions which she had disregarded. But what mattered about her when Cyril every day, every hour for months had taken chances against death, the most ignominious death of all!
Her heart was big with pride in him and she followed the Yellow Dove with her gaze, now rising high and diminishing rapidly in the mist, her soul in her
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