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 the pontoon, I had to give her a long start. He had cast off his parachute harness but it entangled the float and had to be cleared. So she was rising into the air before we moved.

Pete yelled at me that there was no doubt she did it and to keep her in sight. He climbed on my right lower wing, lying as close to the center as possible to avoid throwing me off balance as I climbed.

The blue monoplane swept above us and I slanted up steeply as I could. I did not feel the certainty which filled Pete, but my muscles drew with doubt of her. Something was strange about her. What suddenly had frightened her when she had identified the glove; what so quickly had transformed her when he laughed?

She was steering for the sun with the idea, I thought, of vanishing in its glare. Perhaps she supposed that she had succeeded at this when she swung to the right, still climbing, and circled landward.

I swung about, copying her curve, two miles behind her and five thousand feet lower. Higher than she, perhaps a mile above her,