The car of the balloon was small and neat, some bags of ballast
the untidiest of its contents, and he had found a light
folding-table and put it at his elbow, and on that was a glass
with champagne. And about him, above and below, was space--such
a clear emptiness and silence of space as only the aeronaut can
experience.

He did not know where he might be drifting, or what might happen
next. He accepted this state of affairs with a serenity
creditable to the Smallways' courage, which one might reasonably
have expected to be of a more degenerate and contemptible quality
altogether. His impression was that he was bound to come down
somewhere, and that then, if he wasn't smashed, some one, some
"society" perhaps, would probably pack him and the balloon back
to England. If not, he would ask very firmly for the British
Consul.

"Le consuelo Britannique," he decided this would be. "Apportez
moi a le consuelo Britannique, s'il vous plait," he would say,
for he was by no means ignorant of French. In the meanwhile, he
found the intimate aspects of Mr. Butteridge an interesting
study.

There were letters of an entirely private character addressed to
Mr. Butteridge, and among others several love-letters of a
devouring sort in a large feminine hand. These are no business
of ours, and one remarks with regret that Bert read them.

When he had read them he remarked, "Gollys!" in an awestricken
tone, and then, after a long interval, "I wonder if that was her?