And suddenly he was limp, trembling, aghast at that blind surge of feeling. Why, for a moment he had wanted to go, to leave Ruth. The thought appalled him, was like a treachery against himself. He crept back into bed and lay, determinedly shutting his ears to that distant, joyous whistling that fled southward through the night.
The next day he plunged determinedly into his work at the office. But all through that day he found his eyes straying to the window's blue patch of sky. And week by week thereafter, all through the long months of winter and spring, the old wild yearning grew more and more an unreasonable ache inside his heart, stronger than ever when the flying creatures came winging north in spring.
He told himself savagely, "You're a fool. You love Ruth more than anything else on earth and you have her. You don't want anything else."
And again in the sleepless night he would assure himself, "I'm a man, and I'm happy to live a normal man's life, with Ruth."
But in his brain old memories whispered slyly, "Do you remember that first time you flew, that mad thrill of soaring upward for the first time, the first giddy whirl and swoop and glide?"
And the night wind outside the window called, "Remember how you raced with me, beneath the stars and above the sleeping world, and how you laughed and sang as your wings fought me?"
And David Rand buried his face in his pillow and muttered, "I'm not sorry I did it. I'm not!"
Ruth awoke and asked sleepily, "Is anything the matter, David?"
"No, dear," he told her, but when she slept again he felt the hot tears stinging his eyelids, and whispered blindly, "I'm lying to myself. I want to fly again."
But from Ruth, happily occupied with his comfort and their home and their friends, he concealed all that blind, buried longing. He fought to conquer it, destroy it, but could not.
When no one else was by, he would watch with aching heart the swallows darting and diving in the sunset, or the hawk soaring high and remote in the blue, or the kingfisher's thrilling swoop. And then bitterly he would accuse himself of being a traitor to his own love for Ruth.
Then that spring Ruth shyly told him something. "David, next fall—a child of ours"
He was startled. "Ruth, dear!" Then he asked, "You're not afraid that it might be"
She shook her head confidently. "No. Doctor White says there is no chance that it will be born abnormal as you were. He says that the different gene-characters that caused you to be born with wings are bound to be a recessive character, not a dominant, and that there is no chance of that abnormality being inherited. Aren't you glad?"
"Of course," he said, holding her tenderly. "It's going to be wonderful."
Wilson Hall beamed at the news. "A grandchild—that's fine!" he exclaimed. "David, do you know what I'm going to do after its birth? I'm going to retire and leave you as head of the firm."
"Oh, dad!" cried Ruth, and kissed her father joyfully.
David stammered his thanks. And he told himself that this ended for good all his vague, unreasonable longings. He was going to have more than Ruth to think about now, was going to have the responsibilities of a family man.
He plunged into work with new zest.
