She took them in to Miss Matthews. "Letty," she said, "the captain brought them. Isn't he romantic? He is making pink your color. I think it's dear of him."
Miss Matthews blushed. "I'd surely never have picked out Captain Stubbs for the romantic kind, but you never can tell."
"No, you never can tell," Betty agreed, and stood looking idly out of the window.
Miss Matthews, half asleep, murmured, "Well, I'm glad you're not with him," and Bettina, recalled to her obligations to the invalid, answered with assumed carelessness, "So am I," and measured out Miss Matthews' medicine, and talked no more.
But her heart was beating madly as she followed his flight. He was up there--alone. Up there in that wonderful world! Was he thinking of her? Was he hearing, again, those celestial harmonies?
To-day there was no sunshine--but as he circled against the background of moving clouds her thoughts went to that wild hawk in "the wind swept sky."
She knew nothing of the danger. She did not know that, as yet, his machine was not perfected to a point where it could brave with immunity such weather as was threatened by the brooding sky. She only saw his flight--and her hurt heart craved the place which had been hers for a few brief moments of rapture.
When at last he was out of sight, she went about her little duties, but came back again and again to the window, watching for the time when he should reappear.
Anthony and the captain, half-way across the harbor, said things about Justin's recklessness, and spoke of the danger.
"Some day he'll get hurt," was the captain's conclusion, "and then he won't ever fly again."
"Yes." Anthony's eyes were following the "Gray Gull," which was now beyond the harbor and heading for the open sea; growing smaller and smaller, it was at last a mere speck on the horizon.
Then the captain and Anthony, having reached a place offshore which promised a good catch, put out their lines and entered at once upon that ecstatic state of watchfulness which is the heritage of the true fisherman.
The relief which Anthony felt from the cares which had oppressed him was magical. He was sailor enough to love the swell of the waves and the rippling music of the water as it slipped under the anchored boat; he was fisherman enough to be thrilled by the chances of capture; he was artist enough to gloat over the beauty of the dull morning--the white gulls circling overhead, the black rocks sticking their spines above the gray sea, a phantom four-masted ship sailing straight toward them out of the mists.