CHAPTER XIX

THE SEALED BOX

Whatever the Aeroplane Lady thought to herself about the two in the

Wing-room, there was no trace of it in her brisk greeting to Paul

Dampier.

"I hope you haven't been waiting long?" she said. "I'm ready now."

Then she turned to her girl-assistant, who was once more laying the

tacky strips of linen along the seams. "That's right," she said. "You

can go straight on with that wing; that will take you some time. One of

the wings for _your_ machine," she added to the aviator. "I'm ready, Mr.

Dampier."

She and the young man left the Wing-room together and entered the

adjoining office, closing the door behind them.

Left alone, Gwenna went on swiftly working, and as swiftly dreaming.

Rapidly, but none the less surely, seam after long seam was covered; and

the busyness of her fingers seemed to help the fancies of her brain.

"One of the wings for _his_ Machine!" she thought. "And there was I,

thinking I should mind working for that--for 'Her,'" she smiled. "I

don't, after all. I needn't care, now."

Her heart seemed singing within her. Nothing had happened, really. Only,

she was sure of her lover. That was all. All! She worked; and her small

feet on the floor seemed set on air, as in that flying dream.

"Such a great, huge wing for 'Her,'" she murmured to herself. "Such a

little, little wing for himself that he asked for. My tiny one that I

put in my shoe. It was for him I put it there! And now it's begun to

bring him to me. It _has_!" she exulted. "He's begun to care. I _know_

he does."

From the other side of the door came a heightened murmur of voices in

the office. Something heavy seemed to be set down on the floor. That

sealed box, perhaps, that he'd brought with him in the car. Then came

the shutting of the outer door. Mr. Ryan passed the window. Then a sound

of hammering in the office, and the long squeak of a nail being prized

out of wood. They were opening that mysterious package of his. Gwenna's

fingers flew over her own task to the tune of her joyous thoughts.

"I don't care how long it lasts before _anything_ else happens. Don't

care how this flying-machine of his does try to keep him from me. She

won't. She can't. Nothing can!" triumphed the girl, smoothing the canvas

that was her Rival's plumage. "He's going to be mine, with everything

that he knows. So much better, and cleverer, and belonging to different

sort of people as he is, and yet he's going to have _me_ belonging to

him. She's had the last of him putting her always first!"

She heard in the office Paul Dampier's short laugh and his "Oh? you

think so?" to the Aeroplane Lady. Gwenna scarcely wondered what this

might be about. Some business to do with the Machine; but he would come

to an end of that, soon. He'd come back to her, with that look in his

blue eyes, that tone in his deep voice. She could wait patiently now for

the day, whenever it came, when he should tell her definitely that he

loved her and wanted her to be his. There would be that, of

course--Gwenna, the inexperienced, still saw "the proposal" as the scene

set and prepared; the inevitable milestone beside the course of true

love. Never mind that now, though. It didn't matter when. What mattered

was that it _would_ come. Then she would always be with him. It would be

for ever, like that blissful day in the hayfield, that summer night by

the river at the dance, those few bewildering seconds on the Westminster

scaffolding. And with no cruelty of separation afterwards to spoil it.

Nothing--nothing was going to part them, after all.

* * * * *

She had finished the wing. She looked about for the next thing to do.

There were three wings in the room, and all were finished. A fourth wing

still lay, a skeleton of fretted and glued wood, in the workshops; the

skin was not yet stretched over it.

And there were no more letters to write for the firm.

Gwenna had nothing to do.

"I shall _have_ to go into the office and ask," she said, admitting to

herself that she was glad enough to go. So often she had painted for

herself, out of mere memories, the picture of her Airman. He was now in

the office, in the flesh! She need not have to satisfy herself with

pictures of him. She slipped off her sticky pinafore; the white muslin

blouse beneath it was fresh and pretty enough. She moved to the

office-door. It was her room; she had never yet had to knock at that

door.

She pushed it open and stood waiting. For a moment she only saw the

Aeroplane Lady and the tall Aviator. They had their backs to her; they

were standing side by side and examining a plan that they had pinned up

on the matchboarding wall. Paul Dampier's finger was tracing a little

arc on the plan, and he was slowly shaking his head, with the gesture of

a man who says that something "won't do." The Aeroplane Lady's fingers

were meditatively at her lips, and her attitude echoed that of the young

man. Something that they had planned wouldn't do----

Then Gwenna's eyes fell, from these two people, to that "_Something_."

It was something that she had never seen about the Aircraft Works

before. Indeed, she did not remember having seen it ever before,

anywhere, except in pictures. This object was on the floor, half in and

half out of the sealed wooden box that Paul Dampier had brought down

with him in the car, and that he wouldn't let the workmen handle.... So

this was why....

This was it. Aghast, she stared at it.

It was a long, khaki-painted cylinder, and from one end of it a

wicked-looking little nozzle projected for an inch or so. The other

end, which disappeared into the box, showed a peep of a magazine and a

pistol-grip.

Even to Gwenna's unskilled eyes the thing appeared instantly what it

was.

A machine-gun.

"A gun?" she thought, stupefied; "dear me--on an aeroplane?"

"No," said Paul Dampier's voice suddenly, decisively, speaking to the

Aeroplane Lady, "it'll have to be a rifle after all."

And with the sudden breaking of his voice upon her ear, there seemed to

be torn from before the girl's eyes a corner of some veil.

Quite suddenly (how, she could not explain) she knew what all this

meant.

That plan for that new flying-machine. That gun. The whole object of the

ambitions of these people with their so romantic profession. Scraps of

her Aviator's talk about "scouting," and "the new Arm," and "modern

warfare." ...

Just now she had been swept up aloft by his look and tone into the

seventh heaven of a woman's delight. That was Love. Here, epitomised in

that cylinder with that vicious little nozzle, she saw the Power that

could take him from her yet. This was War!

A shudder ran over her.

Her mind took no notice of the facts that there was no War for him to go

to, that this grim preparation must be for experimenting only, for

manoeuvres, sham fights; that this was July, Nineteen-fourteen, an era

of sleepy peace (except for that gossip, half a joke, that we might

have civil war in Ireland yet), and that she and he and everybody they

had to do with lived in the Twentieth Century, in England....

Perhaps it was because she was not English, but British, Welsh. She

entirely lacked that Anglo-Saxon "balance" of which the English are so

proud, and that stolidity and that unimaginativeness. Her imagination

caught some of those unheard, unsuspected messages with which the air

must have been vibrant, all those midsummer weeks.

Her quick, unbalanced Celtic fancy had already shown her as clearly as

if she had seen it with her eyes that image of his Aeroplane as a winged

and taloned Woman-rival. Now it flashed before her, in a twink, another

picture:

Paul Dampier, seated in that Aeroplane, swooping through the air, _armed

and in danger_!

The danger was from below. She did not see that danger. She saw only the

image, against grey, scudding clouds, of the Beloved. But she could feel

it, that poignant Threat to him, to him in every second of his flight.

It was not the mere risk of accident or falling. It was a new peril of

which the shadow, cast before, fell upon the receptive fancy of the girl

who loved the adventurer. And, set to that shadow-picture in her mind,

there rang out to some inner sense of hers a Voice that sounded clear

and ominous words.

They called to her: "_Fired at both by friend and foe----_"

Then stopped.

The young girl didn't remember ever to have heard or even to have read

these words. How should she? It was the warning fore-echo of a phrase

now historic, but then as yet unuttered, that had transmitted itself to

some heightened sense of hers:

"_Fired at both by friend and foe!_"[A]

[A] This phrase occurred in a despatch from Sir David Henderson.

There! It was gone, the waking vision that left her trembling, with a

certainty.

Yes; here was the meaning of the sealed box, of the long confabulation

of her Airman with the Aeroplane Lady.... War was coming. And _they

knew_.

Gwenna, standing there in the doorway, drawing a long breath and feeling

suddenly rather giddy, knew that she had come upon something that she

had not been meant to guess.

What was she to do about it?

Her hand was on the knob of the door.

Must she close it upon herself, or behind her?

Should she come forward and cry, "Oh, if it was a dreadful secret, why

didn't you lock the door?"

Or should she go out noiselessly, taking that burden of a secret with

her? She might confess to the Aeroplane Lady afterwards....

Here she saw that the Airman had half turned. His boyish, determined

profile was dark in shadow against the plan on the wall; the plan of the

P.D.Q. Sunlight through the office window touched and gilded the edge

of his blonde head.

"Yes; I thought so. Have to be a rifle after all," he repeated in a

matter-of-fact tone. Then, turning more round, his glance met the

startled eyes of the girl in the doorway.

And that finished the dilemma for Gwenna.

Something rose up in her and was too strong to let her be silent.

"Oh! I've _seen_ it!" she cried sharply. "_Paul!_"

He took one stride towards her and slipped his arm about her as she

swayed. She was white to the lips.

"Is there any water----" began young Dampier, but already the Aeroplane

Lady had poured out a glassful.

It was he, however, who put it to Gwenna's lips, holding her still.

"It's all _right_, darling," he said reassuringly (and the give-away

word slipped very easily from his tongue). "Better, aren't you?

Frightfully muggy in that room with those radiators! You oughtn't to

be---- Here!" He took some of the cold water and dabbed it on her curls.

"I suppose he knew he could trust the child," thought the Aeroplane Lady

as she closed the door of the Wing-room between herself and those two in

the office, "but I don't know that I should have engaged her if I'd

known. I don't want lovers about the place, here. Of course, this

explains his Aviation dinner and everything----"

* * * * *

Little Gwenna, standing with her small face buried against the Aviator's

tweed jacket, was sighing out that she hadn't _meant_ to come in, hadn't

_meant_ to look at that horrible gun....

The girl didn't know what she was saying. The boy scarcely heard it. He

was rumpling with his cheek the short, silky curls he had always longed

to touch. Presently he tilted her cherub's head back against his

shoulder, then put both his hands about that throat of hers.

She gave an unsteady little laugh.

"You'll throttle me," she murmured.

Without loosening his clasp, he bent his fair head further down, and

kissed her, very gently, on the mouth.

"Don't mind, do you?" he said, into another kiss. "_Do_ you?"

At that moment the Little Thing in his arms had banished all thought of

those Big Things from his mind.

PART II

_JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, 1914_

CHAPTER I

THE AVIATION DINNER

Gwenna began to feel a little nervous and intimidated, even in the car

that took herself and the Aeroplane Lady and the Airman to the Aviation

dinner.

A hundred yards before they reached the portals of the Club in Pall Mall

that car stopped. Then it began to advance again a yard or two at a

time. A long row of other cars and taxis was ahead, and from them

alighted guests in dull black opera hats, with mufflers; once or twice

there was the light and jewelled gleam of a woman's wrap, but they were

mostly men who were driving up.

"Colonel Conyers," said Paul Dampier to the attendant in the great

marble-tiled entrance.

Then he was shown off to the right; Gwenna and the Aeroplane Lady to the

dressing-rooms on the left. Before an immense glass they removed their

wraps and came out to the waiting-room, the girl all misty-white with

the sky-blue sash and the dancing-shoes; the Lady gowned in grey satin

that had just the gleam of aluminium in that factory of hers, and with

her brooch of the winged serpents fastened at her breast.

They sat down at one of the little polished tables in the waiting-room

under the long windows on to Pall Mall; it was a high, light-panelled

room, with a frieze of giant roses. A couple of ladies went by to the

dressing-room, greeting Mrs. Crew as they passed.

Then there stopped to speak to her a third and older and very handsome

lady all in black, with diamonds ablaze in her laces and in her grey,

piled-up hair.

"There should be some good speeches to-night, shouldn't there?" said

this lady. "All these splendid men!... You know, my dear, take us for

all in all"--and she gave a little laugh--"we _are_ splendid!"

"But there are so few of us," said the Aeroplane Lady, ruefully.

The other woman, about to pass on, stopped for a moment again, and

looking over her white shoulder said, very seriously, something that

both her hearers were to remember. "If England is ever to be saved, it

will be by a few."

She went out; and Mrs. Crewe said to Gwenna, "That was Lady----"

(Something) "the wife of the man who's as responsible as most people for

the security of this Empire----"

Most of the people there seemed to know the Aeroplane Lady quite well,

Gwenna noticed, when Paul Dampier came up and took them out into the

Central Hall again, where the guests were assembling. The place seemed

as high as a cathedral, with a marble floor, and alcoves, and tall,

classic, brass tripod things to hold the end of men's cigarettes and

ashes. The Aeroplane Lady was at once surrounded by a group of men.

Gwenna, feeling very shy and little and of no account, turned to her

Airman.

"You said," she murmured reproachfully, "that there _weren't_ going to

be a lot of grand people."

"These aren't 'grand,' bless you! People aren't, who are really--well,

who 'do things,' as you say. Not nearly as frilly here as at the Smiths,

that other dinner," he said, smiling down at her. "I'm going to bring up

Colonel Conyers and introduce him to you----"

"_Him?_ Good _gracious_!" thought the little Welsh girl in consternation

to herself. "Colonel Conyers!--oh, no, please--I should be much too

frightened----"

But the tall figure had detached itself from a group at a word from Paul

Dampier, and Colonel Conyers came up. Gwenna recognised the lean,

smiling, half-mischievous face of the soldier who--those ages ago!--had

talked to those ladies in the motor-car at Hendon.

This was the man they called "Aircraft Conyers," the man practically at

the head of Aeronautics, Paul had, said, the man in whose hands rested

(among so many, many other things) the whole career of the inventor of

the P.D.Q.! Gwenna, with her curly head whirling, felt inclined to drop

a schoolchild's curtsy to this Great One of the Councils of the Earth.

He took her hand into his own long, lean one.

"How d'you do?" he drawled, smiling cheerfully. "Starving, what? I am, I

can tell you. Always late here. Won't be long, now. You're at my table,

I believe." Then, almost anxiously, "Fond of chocolates? You are? Good.

Then I can collect the lot of those little silver dishes around us and

pretend it's all for you. It's for me, really."

Gwenna, who was not able to help laughing at this unexpectedness on the

part of the great Aircraft Conyers, said: "Are _you_ fond of them?"

"Passionately. Passionately!" said Colonel Conyers with a nod, as he

turned to find his own dinner-partner.

"Didn't frighten you much, did he?" laughed Paul Dampier to the Little

Thing at his side. "Course he didn't. I'll tell you who most of the

others are when we get into the supper-room."

In the great supper-room with its painted ceiling and gilded pillars

dinner was laid on a number of small tables for parties of six or eight.

Gwenna found herself the only woman at their table, the Aeroplane Lady

sitting far down at the other end of the room.

All dazed, the young girl looked about her like a stray bird that has

fluttered in through an open window. Beside her, Paul Dampier pointed

out to her this celebrity and that at the tables.

"Colonel Conyers you've seen...." (That personage had nodded to the

young girl over a stack of pink roses and had made a little movement to

show the basket of sweets beside his plate.) "Now that man with the

Order, that's Lord" (So-and-So), "Director of Coast Defence. And that"

(So-and-So), "Chief Engineer. And that little man one down--in the

opposite direction from where I'm looking--that's" (So-and-So), "editor

of _The Air_. Wonderful chap; brains enough to sink a ship."

An extraordinary mixture of men, Gwenna thought, as her glance followed

his direction, and he went on talking. Soldiers, sailors, chemists,

scientists, ministers; all banded together. Ranks and fortunes were

merged. Here were men of position, men of brains, men of money. Men

whose names were in all the newspapers, and men the papers had never

heard of, all with one aim and object, the furtherance of Civilisation's

newest advance: the Conquest of the Air.

The dinner proceeded. Pale amber wine whispered and bubbled in her

glass, dishes came and went, but the girl scarcely knew what she ate or

drank. She was in a new world, and _he_ had brought her there. She felt

it so intensely that presently it almost numbed her. She was long past

the stage of excitement that manifests itself in gasps and exclamations.

She could speak ordinarily and calmly when Paul Dampier, turning from

his talk to a Physical Laboratory man in a very badly brushed coat,

asked her: "Well? Find it interesting?"

"You know I do," she said, with a grave little glance.

He said, smiling, "What did you say to the red-haired youth about not

going to the matinee with him first?"

"Mr. Ryan? Oh! I just told him I hadn't got over my headache from the

smell of dope, and that I was afraid it would tire me too much to do

both."

"Pretty annoyed, I expect, wasn't he?"

"Yes, he was," replied Gwenna, with the absolute callousness of a woman

in love towards the feelings of any but the one man. She did not even

trouble whether it had been the feelings or the vanity of Mr. Peter Ryan

that had been hurt. What mattered was that Paul Dampier had not wished

her to go to that matinee.

Paul Dampier said, "Well, I cried off an engagement to-night, too.

Colonel Conyers wanted to take me back with him. But I'm seeing you

home."

"Oh, but you mustn't; you needn't!" she protested happily. "I'm not

going down to the Works, you know, to-night. I'm sleeping at the Club.

I'm staying this week-end with Leslie."

"With Leslie, are you? M'm. But I'm taking you up to the Club

afterwards," he persisted. "A fellow's got to look after"--here he

laughed a little as if it were a joke that pleased him--"a fellow's got

to look after his _fiancee_, hasn't he?"

She was a little subdued. She thought for the moment that he had put

Colonel Conyers off, not for her, after all! but for that Machine of

his. Then she thought: No!--the machine was second now. She said, half

in hope, half in dread, "D'you mean the P.D.Q.?"

He turned, with his mouth full of salad, staring whimsically at her.

"The P.D.Q.? What you thinking of? I meant _you_."

"_Me?_" She gave a little gasp.

Life and happiness were too much for her again. She felt as if that

whispering untouched champagne in her glass had gone to her head. Was

it really true--_that_, that he had said?

"Well, aren't you?" he said gaily, but dropping his voice a little as

the conversation rose about them. "Aren't you that to me? Engaged,

aren't we?"

"Oh, I don't know," the young girl said, breathlessly. It was as if the

moon that one had cried for had suddenly dropped, to lie like a round,

silver mirror in one's lap. "Did you mean _that_, yesterday afternoon?"

"Didn't I mean it before that?" he said, half to himself. "What about

all those dances? that time when Hugo dragged me off to that place by

the river? Those would have been _most_ incorrect," he teased her, "if

we hadn't been. We shall have to be, my dear."

Then an impulse took her. (It is known to any young girl who is

sincerely in Love.)

"No. Don't let's----" she said suddenly. "Don't let's be 'engaged'!"

For it seemed to her that a winged Dream was just about to alight and to

become a clumsy creature of Earth--like that Aeroplane on the Flying

Ground. The boy said, staring at her, "_Not_ be engaged? Why on earth?

How d'you mean?"

"I mean, everybody gets '_engaged_,'" she explained very softly and

rapidly over the bread that she was crumbling in her little fingers.

"And it's such a sort of _fuss_, with writing home, and congratulations,

and how-long-has-this-been-going-on, and all that sort of thing! People

at tea-parties and things _talking_ about us! I _know_ they would!"

declared the Welsh girl with distaste, "and saying, 'Dear me, she looks

very young' and _wondering_ about us! Oh, no, _don't_ let's have it! It

would seem to _spoil_ it, for me! Don't let's _call_ it anything, need

we? Don't let's say anything yet, except to--just US."

"All right," said the boy with an easy shrug. (He was too young to know

what he was escaping.) "Sure I don't mind, as long as you're just with

me, all the time we can."

She said, wonderfully sedate above the tumult in her heart, "Did you

bring my locket with you to-night?"

"No. I didn't. D'you know why? Can't you guess? Because I wanted to give

it back to you when _I_ could put it round my Girl's neck," he told her.

And she turned away from him, so happily confused again that she could

not speak.

She was his Girl; his. And because he was one of this band of brothers,

sitting here feasting and talking, each making it his business to

contribute his share to the sum of what was to be one of the World's

greatest Forces, why! because of that, even she, little Gwenna Williams,

could feel herself to be a tiny part of that Force. She was an Aviator's

girl--even if it were a wonderful secret that nobody knew, so far, but

he and she.

(Already everybody at that table and many others in the room had

remarked what a pretty little creature young Dampier's sweetheart was.)

* * * * *

"_The King!_" announced the President of the Dinner.

There was a movement and a rustle all round the great supper-room as the

guests rose to the toast; another rustle as they reseated themselves.

One of the celebrities whom Paul had pointed out to her began to speak

upon the achievements of Wilbur Wright. At the table next to Gwenna some

journalists bent absorbed over scribbling pads. Speech followed speech

as the toasts were gone through. The opal-blue haze of cigarette smoke

drifted up above the white tables with their rose-pink and ferny

decorations. Chairs were pushed sidewards as guests turned alert and

listening faces towards the head of the room; and every now and again

the grave and concise and pleasantly modulated tones of some

speaker-on-the-subject of his heart were broken in upon by a soft storm

of applause.

"Colonel Conyers to speak now," murmured Paul to Gwenna, as the long,

lean figure that had been sitting opposite to them rose. He stepped

backwards, to stand against one of those gilded pillars as he made his

speech, responding to the toast that had coupled his name with that of

the Flying Wing of the Army.

Gwenna listened with even more breathless attention than she had paid to

the other speakers.

Colonel Conyers spoke easily and lightly, as if he had been, not making

a speech, but talking to a knot of friends at his house. He reviewed, in

terms so simple that even the young girl at his table could follow all

he said, the difficulties and the risks of aviation, and the steps that

had been taken to minimise those risks. Wind, it seemed, had been in a

great measure overcome. Risk from faulty workmanship of machines--that,

too, was overcome. Workmanship was now well-nigh as perfect as it could

be made.

Here Gwenna glowed with pride, exchanging a glance with her employer far

down the tables. This meant _their_ workmanship at Aircraft Factories;

their Factory, too! This meant the labours of Mrs. Crewe and of Mr.

Ryan, and of Andre, and of the workmen in overalls at the lathes in that

noisy central shop. Even the brushful of dope that she, Gwenna, spread

conscientiously over each seam of the great wings, played its tiny part

in helping to preserve a Flyer's life!

The risk in stability, too, Colonel Conyers said, had been successfully

combatted by the gyroscope. There remained, however, Fog and Darkness as

the chief perils, which, at the present moment, of July,

Nineteen-fourteen, our Airmen had to fight....

In the soldier's lean face that shrewd, half-mischievous smile was

flickering as he spoke; his grey trim head turning now and again against

the gilded column, his keen eyes fixed upon some objective of his own,

his strong hand fidgeting in the small mechanical gesture of a man who

is less accustomed to speaking about things than to doing them.

Gwenna thought how different, how entirely different were all these

people here from that other dinner-party at the house of the prosperous

and artistic Smiths who had found so much to say about the Russian

Ballet!

Definitely now Gwenna saw what the chief difference between them was.

_Those other people treated and spoke of a pastime as though it were a

matter of Life and Death. These people here made Life and Death matters

their pastime._

"And these splendid real people are the ones I'm going to belong to,"

the girl told herself with a glance at the tall boy beside her who had

decided her fate. That thought was to glow in the very depths of her,

like a firefly nestling at the heart of a rose, for as long as she

lived.

The even, pleasant tones of Colonel Conyers went on to give as one of

the most hopeful features of aviation the readiness of the quite young

man of the present day to volunteer. No sooner was a fatality announced

than for one airman who, cheerfully giving his life for the service of

his country, had been put out of action, half a dozen promising young

fellows were eager to come forward and take his place.

"Two of 'em again yesterday.... Two of his lieutenants, killed in

Yorkshire," whispered Paul Dampier, leaning to Gwenna.

She missed the next sentence of Colonel Conyers, which concluded

cheerily enough with the hard-worked but heartening reminder that whom

the Gods love die young....

Then, with a broadening of that humorous smile and with a glint in his

eyes, he referred to "those other people (plump and well-to-do--and

quite young people) who do, still, really appear to consider that the

whole of a man's duty to his country is to preserve his health for as

long as possible and then, having reached a ripe old age, to die

comfortably and respectably in his bed!----"

There was a short ripple of laughter about the room; but after this

Gwenna heard very little.

Not only was she incapable of taking any more in, but this last sentence

pulled her up with a sudden memory of what she had seen, yesterday.

_That gun at the Aircraft Works. That pictured presentiment in her own

mind._

And she heard again, through Colonel Conyers' pleasant voice, the queer,

unexplained words that had haunted her:

"_Fired at by both friend and foe._"

She thought, "I must ask! I must say something to Paul about that----"

CHAPTER II

THE "WHISPER OF WAR"

She said it after the dinner had broken up.

In the great hall young Dampier had turned to the Aeroplane Lady with

his offer of motoring her to her Hotel first. She had good-naturedly

laughed at him and said, "No. I'm going to be driven back by the

rightful owner of the car this time. You take Miss Williams."

And then she had gone off with some friend of Paul's who had motors to

lend, and Paul had taken Gwenna to find a taxi to drive up to Hampstead.

They drove slowly through Piccadilly Circus, now brighter than at

midday. It was thronged with the theatre-crowds that surged towards the

crossings. Coloured restaurant-coats and jewelled head-gear and laughing

faces were gay in the lights that made that broad blazing belt about the

fountain. Higher up the whole air was a soft haze of gold, melting into

the hot, star-strewn purple of the night-sky. And against this there

tapered, black and slender, the apex of the fountain, the

downward-swooping shape that is not Mercury, but the flying Love--the

Lad with Wings.

Paul Dampier leant back in the closed cab and would have drawn the girl

to him.

She put both hands on his broad chest to hold him a little away from

her.

"I want to ask you something," she began a little tremulously. "It's

just--Is there going to be----"

"Well, what?" he asked, smiling close to her.

Of all things that he least expected came what the girl had to say.

"Is there going to be--a War, Paul?"

"A _what_?" he asked, thinking he had not heard aright.

She repeated it, tremulously. "A war. Real war."

"War?" he echoed, blankly, taken aback. He was silent from puzzled

astonishment over her asking this, as they turned up Shaftesbury Avenue.

They were held up outside the Hippodrome for some minutes. He was still

silent. The taxi gave a jerk and went on. And she still waited for his

reply. She had to remind him.

"Well," she said again, tremulous. "_Is_ there going to be?"

"A war? A _war_ indeed," he said again. "What an

extraordinary--Who's--What put such a thing into your head?"

She said, "_Is_ there?"

The boy gave a half-amazed, half-uneasy laugh. He retorted, "What d'you

mean, Gwenna? A war _where_?"

She said flutteringly, "Anywhere."

"Oh," he said, and laughed as if relieved. "Always some war, somewhere.

Frontier shows in India, and so on. There is some scrapping going on in

Europe too, now, you know. Looks as if Austria and Servia were going to

have a set-to. You mean that."

"No, I don't," persisted the Welsh girl, to whom these places seemed

indescribably remote and beside the mark. "I mean ... a war to do with

_us_, like."

"Us----?"

"To do with England."

"But----" he said, frowning. "Why, how absurd! A war with England?

Why ... of course not. Why should you think of it?"

She cleared her throat and answered with another tremulous question.

"Why should you have--that gun-thing--on your aeroplane?"

"Not going to. Not on the P.D.Q.," he said, shaking his head. "Only an

experiment, anyhow."

"Why should you have 'experiments' with those things?" she faltered.

"'_Have to be a rifle_,' you said. Why should you talk about 'scouting'

and 'modern warfare'?"

"I wasn't!" he said quite hotly.

"Yes, you were. That day we were together. That day in the field when

you were talking to me about the Machine."

"Oh, _then_! Weeks ago."

"Yes. Why should there _be_ all that, unless you meant that there'd be a

war, with England in it. _Paul!_" she cried, almost accusingly, "you

said yourself that it was '_bound to come_!'"

"Oh, well! Everybody said _that_," he assured her lightly. "Can't help

seeing Germany and that Fleet of hers, and her Zeppelins and things,

going on build, build, build. They don't do that for their health, you

bet! Scrap's bound to come; yes. Sooner or later."

"Yes, Paul; but _when_?"

"How should I know, my _dear_ child?" retorted the young Airman. "Why

didn't you ask Lord Thingummy, or Conyers at the Club just now?" he

laughed. "Good speech of his, wasn't it?"

"Does _he_ know?" persisted Gwenna, paling. "About the war coming, I

mean?"

"More likely to know than I am, those people. Not that they'd give it

away if they did. It won't be to-morrow, anyway. To-morrow; that's

Sunday. _Our_ holiday. Another day we shall have all to ourselves. Tell

me what time I'm to call for you at the Club."

Not to be put off, she retorted, timid, persistent, "Tell me when _you_

think it would come. Soon?"

Half laughing, half impatient, he said, "I _don't_ know. Soon enough for

it to be in my time, I hope."

"But--" she said, with a little catch in her voice, "you're not a

soldier?"

He said quietly, "I'm an aviator."

An aviator; yes. That was what she meant. He belonged to the most daring

and romantic of professions; the most dangerous, but not _that_ danger.

An inventor, part of his time; the rest of his time an airman at Hendon

who made flights above what the man with the megaphone called the

"Aer-rio-drome" above the khaki-green ground with the pylons and the

border of summer-frocked spectators. _Her_ boy! An aviator.... Would

that mean presently a man flying above enemy country, to shoot and be

shot at? ("_Fired at by both friend and foe._"). She said quiveringly:

"_You_ wouldn't have to fight?"

He said: "Hope so, I'm sure."

"Oh, Paul!" she cried, aghast, her hands on his arm. "Just when--when

I've only just _got_ you! To lose you again so soon----! Oh, no----!"

"Oh, I say, darling, don't be so silly," he said briskly and

reassuringly. He patted the little hands. "We're not going to talk about

this sort of thing, d'you hear? There's nothing to talk _about_.

Actually, there's nothing. Understand?"

"Yes," she murmured slowly. She thought, "Actually, 'there's nothing to

talk about' in what's between him and me. _But it's there all the

time._"

And then, gradually, that presentiment of War began to fade in the

reality of her joy at being with him now, with him still....

They turned up the Hampstead Road, flaring with naphtha-lights above the

stalls, noisy with shouts of costers, crowded with the humble shoppers

of Saturday night.

"Well, and what about to-morrow?" Dampier took up.

"I _was_ going with Leslie to----"

"So you said. With Leslie, indeed! D'you think you're going to be

allowed to go anywhere again, except with _me_?" he muttered as he put

his arms about her.

He held her as close as he had done on the scaffolding, that afternoon

when he had arranged with himself never to see the Little Thing again;

close as he'd done next time he did see her, at the Factory.

"Oh, _you_ don't know!" he said quite resentfully (while she laughed

softly and happily in his hold), "you _don't_ know how I've wanted you

with me. I--I haven't been able to think of anything--You _have_ got a

fellow fond of you in a jolly short time, haven't you? How've you done

it? M'm? I--Here!" he broke off savagely, "what _is_ this dashed idiot

stopping the taxi for?"

"Because I get out here. It's the Club," Gwenna explained to him

gravely, opening the door of the cab for herself. "Good-night."

"What? No, you don't," protested the boy. "We're going up the Spaniards

Road and down by the Whitestone Pond, and round by Hendon first. I must

take you for a drive. It's not so late. Hang it, I haven't _seen_ you to

speak to----"

She had made a dash out and across the lamp-lighted asphalt, and now

she nodded to him from the top step of the house, with her key already

clicking in the lock.

"There," she thought.

For even in the tie that binds the most adoring heart there is twisted

some little gay strand of retaliation.

Let _him_ feel that after a whole evening of sitting in her pocket he

hadn't seen anything of her. She'd known that sort of feeling long

enough. Let _him_ take his turn; let _him_ have just a taste of it!

"Good-night!" she called softly to her lover before she disappeared.

"See you to-morrow!"

CHAPTER III

THE LAST SUNDAY OF PEACE

Never had Gwenna risen so early after having spent so little of a night

in sleep!

Into the small hours she had crouched in her kimono on the edge of

Leslie's camp bedstead in the light that came from the street lamp

outside the window; and she had talked and talked and talked.

For by "not saying anything about it" she had never meant keeping her

happiness from that close chum.

Miss Long, sincerely delighted, had listened and had nodded her wise

black head from the pillow. She had thrown in the confidante's running

comments of "There! What did Leslie tell you?... Oh, he would, of

course.... Good.... Oh, my dear, _how_ exactly like them all.... No, no;

I didn't mean that. (Of course there's nobody like _him_); I meant

'Fancy!' ... Yes and then what did Paul say, Virginia?" At last

repetitions had cropped up again and again into the softly chattered

recital, with all its girlish italics of: "Oh, but you _don't_ know what

he's like; oh, Leslie, no, you _can't_ imagine!"--At last Leslie had

sighed, a trifle enviously. And little Gwenna, pattering to the head of

the bed, had put her cheek to the other girl's and had whispered

earnestly: "Oh, Leslie, if I only could, d'you know what I'd do? I'd

arrange so that he had a twin-brother _exactly_ like him, to fall in

love with _you_!"

"Taffy! you are too ... _sweet_," the elder girl had whispered back in a

stifled voice.

Gwenna never guessed how Leslie Long had had much ado not to giggle

aloud over that idea. To think of her, Leslie, finding rapture with any

one of the type of the Dampier boy....

A twin-brother of _his_? Another equally bread-and-buttery blonde

infant--an infant-in-arms who was even "simpler" than Monty Scott? Oh,

Ishtar!... For thus does one woman count as profoundest boredom what

brings to her sister Ecstasy itself.

And now here was Gwenna, all in white, coming down to the Club's Sunday

breakfast with her broad hat already on her head and her gloves and her

vanity-bag in her hand.

At the head of the table sat the Vicar's widow with the gold curb brooch

and the look of resigned disapproval. Over the table Miss Armitage and

the other suffrage-workers were discussing the Cat-and-Mouse Act.

Opposite to them one of the art-students, with her hair cut a la Trilby,

was listening bewildered, ready to be convinced.... Not one of the usual

things remained unsaid....

Presently Gwenna's neighbour and _bete noire_, Miss Armitage, was

denouncing the few remaining members of her sex who still seemed to

acquiesce in the Oriental attitude towards Woman; who still remained

serfs or chattels or toys.

"However! _Thy_ needn't think thy _caount_," declared the lecturer

firmly, stretching without apology across her neighbour to get the salt.

With some distaste Gwenna regarded her. She had spots on her face.

"Pleasers of Men!" she pursued, with noble scorn. "The remnant of the

Slyve-girl Type, now happily extinct----"

"Loud cheers," from Leslie Long.

"The serpent's tile," continued the suffragette, "the serpent's tile

that, after the reptile has been beaten to death, still gows on feebly

wriggling----"

"Better wriggle off now, Taffy, my child," murmured Leslie, who sat

facing the breakfast-room window. "Here's a degraded Oriental coming up

the path now to call for his serf."

"_You_ come," said Gwenna, warmly flushed as she rose. And she held her

chum's long arm, dragging her with her as she came into the hall where

the tall, typically English figure of her Airman stood, his straw hat in

his hand. A splash of scarlet from the stained glass of the hall door

fell upon his fair head and across his cheek as he turned.

"Good-morning," said Gwenna sedately, and without giving him so much as

a glance. She felt at that moment that she would rather keep him at

arm's length for ever than allow him even to hold her hand, with Leslie

there. For it takes those who are cooler in temperament than was the

little Welsh girl, or those who care less for their lovers than she did,

to show themselves warmer in the presence of others.

"Hullo," said Paul Dampier to her. Then, "Hullo, Miss Long! How d'you

do?"

Leslie gave him a very hearty shake of the hand, a more friendly glance

and a still more demure inquiry about that Machine of his.

Paul Dampier laughed, returning her glance.

She was a sport, he thought. She could be trusted not to claim, just

yet, the bet she'd won from his cousin; the laughing wager about the

Aeroplane versus the Girl. Fifteen to one on the Girl, wasn't it? And

here was the Girl home in his heart now, with the whole of a gorgeous

July Sunday before them for their first holiday together.

"I say, I'm not too early now, am I?" he asked as he and the girl walked

down the Club steps together. "I was the first time, so I just went for

a walk round the cricket-pitch and back. Sickening thing I couldn't rake

up a car anywhere for to-day. Put up with trains or tubes and taxis

instead, I'm afraid. D'you mind? Where shall we go?"

* * * * *

"Flying, of course," was Gwenna's first thought. "Now at last he'll take

me up." But that would be for the afternoon.

For the morning they wanted country, and grass, and trees to sit

under.... Not Hampstead; Richmond Park was finally decided upon.

"We'll taxi to Waterloo," the boy said, with an inward doubt. He dived a

long brown hand into his pocket as they walked together down the road

that Gwenna used to take every morning to her Westminster bus. He was

particularly short of money just then. Dashed nuisance! Just when he

would have wished to be particularly flush! That's what came of buying a

clock for the Machine before it was wanted. Still, he couldn't let the

Little Thing here know that. Manage somehow. A taxi came rattling down

the Pond Street Hill from Belsize Park as they reached the

stopping-place of the buses, and Paul held up his hand.

"Taxi!"

But the driver shook his head. He pulled up the taxi in front of a

small, rather mean-looking house close to where Gwenna and Paul were

standing on the pavement. Then his fare came out of the house, a kit-bag

in each hand and a steamer-rug thrown over his arm; he was a small,

compactly-built young man in clothes so new and so smart that they

seemed oddly out of place with the slatternly entrance of his

lodging-house. It was this that made Paul Dampier look a little hard at

him. Gwenna was wondering where she'd seen that blonde, grave face of

his before.

He sprang lightly into the cab; a pink-faced girl was sitting there,

whom Gwenna did not see. If she had seen her, she would have recognised

her Westminster colleague, Ottilie Becker.

"Liverpool Street," ordered Miss Becker's companion, setting down his

luggage.

Then, raising his head, he caught the eyes upon him of the other young

man in the street. He put a hand to his hat, gave a quick little odd

smile, and leaned forward out of the cab.

"_Auf Wiedersehen!_" he called, as the taxi started off--for Liverpool

Street.

"Deuce did he mean by that?" exclaimed the young Englishman, staring

after the cab. "Who on earth was that fellow? I didn't know him."

"Nor did I. But I _have_ seen him," said Gwenna.

"I believe I have, somewhere," said Paul, musing.

They puzzled over it for a bit as they went on to Waterloo on the top of

their bus.

And then, when they were passing "The Horse Shoe" in Tottenham Court

Road, and when they were talking about something quite different (about

the river-dance, in fact), they both broke off talking sharply. Gwenna,

with a little jump on the slanting front seat, exclaimed, "I know--!"

Just as Paul said, "By Jove! I've got it! I know who that fellow was.

That German fellow just now. He was one of the waiters at that very

dance, Gwenna!"

Gwenna, turning, said breathlessly, "Yes, I know. The one who passed us

on the path. But I've thought of something else, too. I thought then his

face reminded me of somebody's; I know now who it is. It's that fair

young man who came down to try and be taken on at the Works."

"At Westminster?" Paul asked quickly.

"No; at the Aircraft Works one afternoon. He talked English awfully

well, and he said he was Swiss. And then Andre--you know, the big, dark

French workman--talked to him for quite a long time in French; he said

he seemed very intelligent. But he wouldn't give him a job, whatever."

"He wouldn't?"

"No. I heard him tell the Aeroplane Lady that the young man ('_ce

garcon-la_') came from the wrong canton," said Gwenna. "So he went away.

I saw him go out. He was awfully _like_ that German waiter. I suppose

most Germans look alike, to us."

"S'pose so," said the Aviator, adding, "Was that the day that drawing of

mine was missing from the Aircraft Works, I wonder?"

She looked at him, surprised. "I didn't know one of your drawings was

missing, Paul."

"Yes. It didn't matter, as it happened. Drawing of a detail for my

Machine. I've taken jolly good care not to have complete drawings of it

anywhere," he said, with a little nod.

And some minutes later they had begun to talk of something else again,

as the bus lurched on through the hot, deserted Sunday streets.

* * * * *

The morning that had brought Gwenna to her lover left Gwenna's chum for

once at a loose end.

"Leslie, my child, aren't you a little tired of being the looker-on who

sees most of the game? Won't you take a hand?" Miss Long asked herself

as she went back into her Club bedroom. It was scented with the fresh

smell of the rosemary and bay-rum that Leslie used for her ink-black

sheaf of hair, and there drifted in through the open window the sound of

bells from all the churches.

"Sunday. My free morning! '_The better the day._' So I'll settle up at

last what I am going to do about this little matter of my future," she

decided.

She sat down at the little bamboo writing-table set against the bedroom

wall. Above it there hung (since this was a girl's room!) a

looking-glass; and about the looking-glass there was festooned a little

garland made up of dance-programmes, dangling by their pencils, of gaudy

paper-fans from restaurants, and of strung beads. Stuck crookedly into a

corner of the glass there was a cockling snapshot. It showed Monty

Scott's dark head above his sculptor's blouse. Leslie picked it out and

looked at it.

"Handsome, wicked eyes," she said to it lightly. "The only wicked things

about you, you unsophisticated infant-in-arms!" Then she said, "You and

your sculpturing!... _Just_ like a baby with its box of bricks. Besides,

I don't suppose you'll ever have a penny. One doesn't marry a man

because one may like the _look_ of him. No, boy."

She flicked the snapshot aside. There was conscientious carelessness in

the flick.

Then she took out the leather-cased ink-bottle from her dressing-bag,

and some paper.

She wrote: "MY DEAR HUGO----"

Then she stopped and thought--"Maudie and Hilary Smith will be pleased

with me. So will the cousins, the opulent cousins who've always been

kind about clothes they've finished wearing, and invitations to parties

where they want another girl to brighten things up. You can give some

bright parties for _them_ now, Leslie! Good Reason Number Ninety-nine

for saying 'Yes.'"

She took up her pen.

"Nothing," she murmured, "_Nothing_ will ever kill the idea that _the

girl who isn't married is the girl who hasn't been asked_. Nothing will

ever spoil the satisfaction of that girl when showing that she _has_!"

She wrote down the date, which she had forgotten.

"Poor Monty would be so much more decorative for 'show' purposes. But I

explained quite frankly to Hugo that it would be his money I'd want!"

She wrote, "_After thinking it well over_----"

Then again she meditated.

"Great things, reasons! The reason why so many marriages aren't a

success is because they haven't _enough_ 'reasons why' behind them. Now,

how far had I got with mine--ah, yes. Reason Number a Hundred: I'm

twenty-six; I shall never been any better-looking than I am now. Not

unless I'm better-dressed. Which (Reason a Hundred and One) I should be

if I married Hugo. Reason a Hundred and Two: my old lady won't live for

ever, and I should never get a better job than hers. Except his. Reason

Number a Hundred and Two and a Half: I do quite like him. He doesn't

expect anything more, so there's the other half-reason for taking him.

Reason a Hundred and Four: _he's_ never disapproved of me. Whereas Monty

always likes me against his better judgment. Much nicer for me, but

annoying for a husband. I should make Hugo an excellent wife." She added

this half-aloud (to the snapshot).

"I should never shock _him_. Never bore him. Never interfere with him.

Never make him look silly--any sillier than he can't help looking with

that hair and that necktie he will wear. Leslie would have the sense,

when she wasn't amusing him at the moment, to retire to her _own rooms_

(Reason a Hundred and Five for marrying well), and to stay there until

she was fetched. Reason a----"

Here, in the full flow of her reasoning, Miss Long cast suddenly and

rather violently down her pen, and tore the sheet with Hugo's name in it

into tiny strips that she cast into the empty fireplace.

"I can't _think_ to write a good letter to-day!" she excused herself to

herself as she got up from her chair. "I'm tired.... It was all that

talking from Taffy last night. Bother the child. _Bother_ her. _It's

unsettling!_--Bother _all_ engaged girls. (_And all the people shall say

Amen._) I wonder where they went to?... I shall ring up somebody to take

me on the river, I think. Plenty of time to say 'Yes' to Hugo later."

The letter to Hugo, between the lines of which there had come the vision

of an engaged girl's happy face, remained, for the present, unfinished.

Leslie went to the telephone.

"O-o-o Chelsea," she called. "I want to speak to Mr. Scott, please."

She thought, "This shall be my last free Sunday, and I'll have it in

peace!"

* * * * *

In Richmond Park the grass was doubly cool and green beneath the shade

both of the oaks and of the breast-high bracken where Gwenna and Paul

Dampier sat, eating the fruit and cake that they had bought on the way,

and talking with long stretches of contented silence.

They were near enough actually to London and the multitude. But town and

people seemed far away, out of their world to-day.

Gwenna's soft, oddly-accented voice said presently into the warm

stillness, "You'll take me up this afternoon?"

"Up?" he said idly. "Where to?"

"Up flying, of course."

"No, I don't think so," said the young Airman quietly, putting his chin

in his hand as he lay in his favourite attitude, chest downwards in the

grass, looking at her.

"Not flying? Not this afternoon?"

"Don't think so, Little Thing."

"Oh, you're lazy," she teased him, touching a finger to his fair head

and taking it quickly back again. "You don't want to move."

"Not going to move, either; not until I've got to."

She sighed, not too disappointed.

Here in the dappled shade and the solitude with him it was heavenly

enough; even if she did glance upward at the peeps of sapphire-blue

through the leaves and wonder what added rapture it would be to soar to

those heights with her lover.

"D'you know how many times you've put me off?" she said presently,

fanning the midges away from herself with her broad white hat. "Always

you've said you'd take me flying with you, Paul. And always there's been

something to stop it. Let's settle it now. Now, when will you?"

"Ah," he said, and flung the stone of the peach he'd been eating into

the dark green jungle of bracken ahead of them. "Good shot. I wanted to

see if I could get that knob on that branch."

She moved nearer to him and said coaxingly, "What about next Sunday?"

"Hope it'll be as fine as this," he said, smiling at her. "I'd like all

the Sundays to be just like this one. Can't think what I did with all

the ripping days before this, Gwenna."

She said, "I meant, what about your taking me up next Sunday?"

"Nothing about it," he said, shaking his head. There was a little pause.

He crossed his long legs in the grass and said, "Not next Sunday. Nor

the Sunday after that. Nor any Sunday. Nor any time. I may as well tell

you now. You aren't ever coming flying," said the young aviator firmly

to his sweetheart. "I've settled _that_."

The cherub face of the girl looked blankly into his. "But, Paul! No

flying? Why? Surely--It's safe enough now!"

"Safe enough for me--and for most people."

"But you've taken Miss Conyers and plenty of girls flying."

"Girls. Yes."

"And you _promised_ to take me!"

"That was ages ago. That was when you were a girl too."

"Well, what am I now, pray?"

"Don't you know? Not '_a_ girl.' _My_ Girl!" he said.

Then he moved. He knelt up beside her. He made love to her sweetly

enough to cause her to forget all else for a time. And presently,

flushed and shy and enraptured, she brought out of her vanity-bag the

tiny white wing that was to be his mascot, and she safety-pinned it

inside the breast of his old grey jacket.

"That ought to be fastened somewhere to the P.D.Q.," he suggested. But

she shook her head. No. It was not for the P.D.Q. It was for him to

wear.

Then she saw him weighing in his hand her own mascot, the little

mother-of-pearl heart with the silver chain.

"Ah! You did remember to bring it, at last?" she said.

Nestling against his arm, she lifted her chin and waited for him to snap

the trinket about her neck.

He laughed and hesitated. She looked at him rather wonderingly. Then he

made a confession.

"D'you know, I--I do hate to have to give it back again, Gwenna. I've

had it _so_ long. Might as well let me hold on to it. May I?"

"Oh, you are greedy for keepsakes," she said, delighted. "What would you

_do_ with a thing like that?"

"I've thought of something," said he, nodding at her.

She asked, "What?"

"Tell you another time," he smiled, with the locket clutched in the hand

that was about her waist. She flung back her head happily against his

shoulder, curling herself up like a kitten in his hold. They had settled

that they were going to walk on to Kew Gardens to tea, but it was not

time yet, and it was so peaceful here. Scarcely any one passed them in

that nook of the Park. Another happy silence fell upon the lovers. It

was long before the boy broke it, asking softly, "You do like being with

me, don't you?" There was no answer from the girl.

"Do you, Gwenna?" It seemed still odd to be able to call her whatever he

liked, now! "Do you, my Little Sweet Thing?"

Still she didn't answer. He bent closer to look at her.... Her long

eyelashes lay like two little dark half-moons upon her cheeks and her

white blouse fell and rose softly to her breathing. Drowsy from the late

hours she'd kept last night and from the sun-warmed silence under the

trees, she had fallen asleep in his arms. Her eyes were still shut when

at last she heard his deep and gentle voice again in her ear, "I suppose

you know you owe me several pairs of gloves, miss!"

She laughed sleepily, returning (still a little shyly and unfamiliarly!)

the next kiss that he put on her parted lips.

"I was _nearly_ asleep," she said, with a little sudden stretch that ran

all over her like a shake given to a sheet of white aluminium at the

Works. "Isn't it quiet? Feels as if _everything_ was asleep." She opened

her eyes, blinking at the rays of the sun, now level in her face. "Oh, I

_should_ like some tea, wouldn't you?"

They rose to go and find a place for tea in Kew Gardens, among the

happy, lazing Sunday crowds of those whom it has been the fashion to

treat so condescendingly: England's big Middle-classes. There were the

conventional young married couples; "She" wearing out the long tussore

coat that seemed so voluminous; "He," pipe in mouth, wheeling the wicker

mail-cart that held their pink-and-white bud of a baby. There were also

courting couples innumerable....

(Not all of these were as reticent in the public eye as Gwenna had been

with her lover before Leslie.)

To Gwenna the bright landscape and the coloured figures seemed a page

out of some picture-book that she turned idly, her lover beside her. She

had to remind herself that to these other lovers she herself and Paul

were also part of a half-seen picture....

They sat down at one of the green wooden tea-tables, and a waiter in a

greasy black coat came out under the trees to take Dampier's order.

Perhaps that started another train of thought in the girl's mind, for

quite suddenly she exclaimed, "Ah! I've thought of _another_ German now

that he was like!"

"Who was that?" asked Paul.

"Only a picture I used to see every day. A photograph that our Miss

Baker kept pinned up over her desk at the works in Westminster,"

explained Gwenna. "The photograph of that brother of hers that she was

always writing those long letters to."

"Always writing, was she? Was _he_ a waiter?"

"No, he was a soldier. He was in uniform in that photo," Gwenna said, as

the little tray was set before her. "Karl was his name, Karl Becker....

Do you take sugar?"

"Yes. You'll have to remember that for later on," he said, looking at

her with his head tilted back and a laugh in his eyes, as she poured out

his tea. She handed it to him, and then sat sipping her own, looking

dreamily over the English gardens, over the green spaces flowered with

the light frocks and white flannels of other couples who perhaps called

themselves "in love," and who possibly imagined they could ever feel as

she and her lover felt. (Deluded beings!)

She murmured, "What do you suppose all these people are thinking

about?"

"Oh! Whether they'll go to Brighton or to South-end for their fortnight,

I expect," returned Paul Dampier. "Everybody's thinking about holidays

just now."

Later, they stood together in the hushed gloom of the big chestnut aisle

beside the river that slipped softly under Kew Bridge, passing the

willows and islands and the incongruously rural-looking street of

Strand-on-the-Green. One of the cottage-windows there showed red blinds,

lighted up and homely.

Young Dampier whispered to his girl--"Going on holidays myself, perhaps,

presently, eh?"

"Oh, Paul!" she said blankly, "you aren't going away for a holiday, are

you?"

"Not yet, thanks. Not without you."

"Oh!" she said. Then she sighed happily, watching the stars. "To-day's

been the loveliest holiday I've ever had in my life. Hasn't it been

perfect?"

"Not quite," he said, with his eyes on those red-lighted windows on the

opposite bank. "Not perfect, Gwen."

"Not----?" she took up quickly, wondering if she had said something that

he didn't like.

Almost roughly he broke out, "Oh, I say, darling! _Don't_ let's go and

have one of these infernally long engagements, shall we?"

She turned, surprised.

"We said," she reminded him, "that we weren't 'engaged' at all."

"I know," he said. Then he laughed as he stooped and kissed her little

ringless fingers and the palms of her hands. "But----"

There was a pause.

"Got to _marry_ me one day, you know," said young Paul Dampier

seriously.

He might have spoken more seriously still if he had known that what he

said must happen in ten days' time from then.

CHAPTER IV

THAT WEEK-END

For the following week-end saw, among many other things that had not

been bargained for, those lovers apart again.

The very next Saturday after that Aviation Dinner was that

not-to-be-forgotten day in England, when this country, still uncertain,

weighed the part that she was to play in the Great War.

Late on the Friday night of an eventful week, Paul Dampier, the Airman,

had received a summons from Colonel Conyers.

And Gwenna, who had left the Aircraft Works on Saturday morning to come

up to her Hampstead Club, found there her lover's message:

"_Away till Monday. Wait for me._"

She waited with Leslie.

On that bright afternoon the two girls had walked, as they had so often

walked together, about the summer-burnt Heath that was noisy with

cricketers on the grass. They had turned down by the ponds where bathers

dived from the platforms set above the willows; clean-built English

youths splashing and shouting and laughing joyously over their sport.

Last time Gwenna had been with her chum it was she, the girl in love,

who had done all the talking, while Leslie listened.

Now it was Leslie who was restless, strung-up, talkative.... A new

Leslie, her dark eyes anxious and sombre, her usually nonchalant voice

strained as she talked.

"Taffy! D'you realise what it all means? Supposing we don't go in. We

may not go in to war with the others. I know lots of people in this

country will do their best so that we don't lift a finger. People like

the Smiths; my brother-in-law's people. Well-to-do, hating anything that

might get in the way of their having a good year and grubbing up as much

money as usual.... Oh! If we don't go in, I shall emigrate--I shall turn

American--I shan't want to call myself English any more! P'raps you

don't mind because you're Welsh."

Little Gwenna, who was rather pale, but who had a curious stillness over

the growing anxiety in her heart, said, "Of course I mind."

She did not add her thoughts, "_He_ said he hoped the War would come in

his time. I know _he_ would think it perfectly awful if England didn't

fight. And even I can feel that it would be horribly mean--just _looking

on_ at fighting when it came."

Leslie, striding beside her up the hill, went on bitterly, "War! Oh, it

can't come. For years we've said so. Haven't we taken good care not to

let ourselves get 'hysterical' over the German 'scare'? Haven't we

disbanded regiments? Haven't we beaten our swords into cash-registers?

Haven't we even kept down the Navy? Haven't we spread and spread the

idea that soldiering was a silly, obsolete kind of game? Aren't we quite

clever and enlightened enough to look down upon soldiers as a kind of

joke? The brainless Army type. Don't let's forget _that_ phrase," urged

the soldier's daughter. "Why, Taffy, I'll tell you what happened only

last May. I went to Gamage's to get a birthday present for Hilary, my

sister Maudie's little boy. Of course he's _got_ heaps of everything a

child wants. Delightful floor games. Beautiful hand-wrought artistic

toys (made in Munich). Still, I thought he might like a change. I told

the man in the shop I wanted a toy-book of soldiers. Nice simple

drawings and jolly, crude, bright colours of all the different

regiments. Like we used to have at home. And what d'you suppose the

shopman said? He was very sorry, but 'they' hadn't stocked that class of

thing for some time now; so little demand for it! So little demand for

anything that reminds us we've got an Empire to keep!"

Gwenna said half absently, "It was only toys, Leslie."

"Only one more sign of what we're coming to! _Teaching the young idea

not to shoot_," said Leslie gloomily. "That, and a million other

trifles, are going to settle it, I'm afraid. If England is to come down,

_that's_ the sort of thing that will have done it.... Oh, Leslie's been

in it, too, and all her friends. Dancing and drifting and dressing-up

while Rome's been burning.... There'll be no war, Taffy."

Gwenna said, quietly and convinced, "Yes, there will." And she quoted

the saying of the lady at the Aviation Dinner, "_If England is ever to

be saved, it will be by the few._"

* * * * *

They walked round the Highgate Ponds and down the steep hill between the

little, ramshackle, Victorian-looking shops of Heath Street. It was busy

as ever on a Saturday afternoon. They passed the usual troop of Boy

Scouts; the usual straggle of cricketers and lovers from or for the

Heath, and then a knot of rather boyish-looking girls and

girlish-looking boys wearing the art-green school-cap of some

co-educational institution.

"What sort of soldiers do we expect those boys ever to make?" demanded

Leslie.

Outside the dark-red-tiled entrance to the Hampstead Tube there was a

little crowd of people gathered about the paper-sellers with their pink

arresting posters of

"RUMOURS OF WAR

ENGLAND'S DECISION."

"They'll publish a dozen before anything _is_ decided," said Leslie. She

bought a paper, Gwenna another....

No; nothing in them but surmise--suspense--theories--they walked on,

passing Miss Armitage from the Club who had paused on the kerb to talk

to one of her friends, a long-haired man in a broad-leafed brown hat. He

seemed to be dispensing pamphlets to people in the street. As Miss

Armitage smiled and nodded good-bye to him the two other girls came up.

He of the locks slipped a pamphlet into the hand of Leslie Long.

She glanced at it, stopped, and looked at it again. It was headed:

"BRITAIN, STAND ASIDE!"

Leslie stood for a moment and regarded this male. She said very gently,

"You don't want any War?"

The long-haired person in the gutter gave a shrug and a little superior

smile. "Oh, well, that's assumed, isn't it?" he said. "_We_ don't want

any War."

"Or any _country_, I suppose?" said Leslie, walking on. She held the

pamphlet a little gingerly between her finger and thumb. She had thought

of tossing it into the gutter--but no. She kept it as a curiosity.

* * * * *

Late that night she sat on Gwenna Williams' bed at the Club, suspense

eating at her heart. For all the soldier blood in her had taken her back

to old times in barracks, or in shabby lodging-houses in garrison towns,

or on echoing, sunny parade-grounds.... Times before she had drifted

into the gay fringes of the cosmopolitan jungle of Bohemian life in

London. Before the Hospital, the Art-school, the daily "job," with her

evenings for the theatre and the Crab-tree Club, and the dances she

loved. It is the first ten years of a child's life that are said to

"count." They counted now. The twenty-six-year-old Leslie, whose

childhood had been passed within sound of the bugle-call, waited,

waited, waited to know if the ideas of honour and country and glory

which she had taken in unconsciously in those far-off times were now to

be tossed down into the gutter as she would have tossed the leaflet of

that coward. These things, as Miss Armitage and her friends could have

told her, were mere sentimentalities--names--ideas. Yet what has ever

proved stronger than an Idea?

"Oh, _Taffy_!" she sighed impatiently. "If we're told that we're to sit

still and nothing will happen?"

And little Gwenna, lying curled up with a hand in her chum's, murmured

again, "_That's_ not what's coming."

She was quiet because she was dazed with the sheer intensity of her own

more personal anxiety. "What will happen about Paul? What will _he_

do?"

CHAPTER V

THE DIE IS CAST

On Sunday morning she and Leslie went to Church.

In the afternoon they walked again, aimlessly. She felt that she was

only living until Monday, until his return to tell her something. In the

evening the two girls sat out on a seat on Parliament Hill; near where

the man with the standing telescope used to offer peeps at London for a

penny a time. Far, far below, lay London under her web of twinkling

lights. London, England's heart, with that silver ribbon of the river

running through it. Leslie looked away over that prospect as though she

had never seen it before. Little Gwenna turned from it to the view on

the other side--the grass spaces and the trees towards Hendon. She

thought, "On a night as clear as this, aeroplanes could easily go up,

even late."

As the two girls reached the Club again they found a motor drawn up

beside the entrance. Steps came out of the darkness behind them. A man's

voice said "Miss Long." Leslie turned.

There moved into the light of the street-lamp Hugo Swayne. His face,

somehow, had never looked less like an imitation of Chopin; or more like

an ordinary commonplace Englishman's. It was serious, set. Yet it was

exultant. For he, too, was a soldier's son.

He spoke. "I say, I thought I'd bring you the news," he began gravely.

"It's all right. England goes in."

"Is that official?" Leslie asked sharply.

There was a shaky little "War?" from Gwenna.

Then came other, quick steps on the asphalt path, and the girls saw over

Hugo's rather portly shoulder a taller, slighter figure coming up the

road behind him.

It was hatless; the lamplight shone golden on its blonde head. Gwenna's

heart leaped to her lips.

"Paul!" she cried, and made a running step towards him. In a moment

young Dampier was up with the others; the quartette standing as they had

stood on that spring night in this same place, after the Smiths'

dinner-party. There were hasty greetings, murmurs of "Not official?"

"Ah, that's all right----"

"They won't say for a day or so, but----"

Then, clear and distinct, young Dampier's boyish voice rang out in a

curious announcement. "Glad _you're_ here, Hugo. I was coming to you. I

want to borrow rather a lot of money of you, at once. Forty pounds, I

think it is. Sorry. Must have it. It's for a marriage-licence!"

Hugo, utterly taken aback, stared and murmured, "My dear

chap---- Certain---- A m----?"

"Yes. I shall have to be off, you know. Of course. And I shall get

married before I go," announced Paul Dampier, brusquely. He turned as

brusquely to the girl.

"You and I are going to get married by special licence," he told her,

"the day after to-morrow."

CHAPTER VI

HER GUARDIAN'S CONSENT

The Reverend Hugh Lloyd, who was Gwenna Williams' only relative and

guardian and therefore the person from whom consent might be asked if

ever the girl wished to be engaged, sat reading _The Cambrian News_. He

sat, over his breakfast eggs and tea, in the kitchen-sitting-room of his

Chapel House. Inside, the grandfather clock ticked slowly but still

pointed (as ever) to half-past two; and the cosy room, with its Welsh

dresser and its book-shelves, still held its characteristic smell of

singeing hearthrug. Outside, quiet brooded over the valley that fine

August morning. The smoke from the village chimneys rose blue and

straight against the larches of the hill-side. The more distant hills of

that landscape were faintly mauve against the cloudless, fainter blue of

the late-summer sky. All the world seemed so peaceful!

And the expression on the Reverend Hugh's face of a Jesuit priest under

its thatch of bog-cotton hair was that of a man at peace with all the

world.

True, there were rumours, in some of the newspapers, of some War going

on somewhere in the world outside.

But it was a long way from here to that old Continent, as they called

it! For the matter of that, it was a long way to London, where they

settled what they were going to do about Germany....

What they were going to do about Welsh Disestablishment was a good deal

more important, to a Welshman. There were some very good things about

that in this very article. The Reverend Hugh had written it himself.

Presently, in the midst of his reading, his housekeeper (who was a

small, middle-aged woman, rather like a black hen) entered the room at a

run.

"Telegram for you, sir."

"Ah, yes; thank you, Margat," her master said as he took it.

He had guessed already what was in it. Some arrangement to do with his

next Sabbath-day's journey. For he was a very popular preacher, invited

to give sermons by exchange in every country town in Wales.

"This," he told his housekeeper complacently, as he tore open the

envelope, "will be to say am I ex Pected in Carnarvon on the Sat Teudeh,

or----"

Here he broke off, staring at the message in his hand. It was a long

one.

There was a moment's silence while the clock ticked. Then that silence

was broken by an exclamation, in Welsh, from a man startled out of all

professional decorum. He added, with more restraint, but also in Welsh,

"Great King!"

Then he exclaimed, "Dear father!" and "_Name_ of goodness!"

"What is it, Mr. Lloyd _bach_?" demanded his housekeeper excitedly in

Welsh, clutching her black, crochet wool shawl about her shoulders as

she waited by the side of the breakfast.

"Is it somebody died?" In her mind's eye she saw already that loved orgy

of her kind--a funeral.

The Reverend Hugh shook his handsome white head. Again he read through

the longest telegraph message that he had ever received:

It ran:

"_Dear Sir am going to marry your niece Gwenna to-morrow Tuesday

morning at Hampstead regret forced to give you this short notice

but impossible to do otherwise owing military duties trust you will

excuse apparent casualness will write further particulars yours

sincerely Paul Dampier Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps._"

"_Name_ of goodness!" breathed the Reverend Hugh, brushing back his

white locks in consternation. And at short intervals he continued to

ejaculate. "What did I tell her? _What_ did I tell her!... Indeed, it's

a great pity I ever let her go away from home.... It was my fault; my

fault.... Young men----! This one sounds as if he was gone quite mad,

whatever."

So the Reverend Hugh addressed his answer to Miss Gwenna Williams at her

Club.

And it said:

"_Coming up to see you nine-thirty Euston to-night. Uncle._"

* * * * *

"I'm sure he'll be simply horrid about it," Gwenna rather tremulously

told her betrothed that evening, as they walked, the small, curly-haired

girl in dark blue and the tall, grey-clad aviator, up and down the

platform at Euston Station, waiting for the Welsh train to come in.

Little Gwenna was experiencing a feeling not unknown among those shortly

to be married; namely, that _every prospect was pleasing--save that of

having to face one's relatives with the affair_!

"He was always rather a dret-ful old man," she confided anxiously to

Paul, as they paced the sooty flags of the platform. "It's _just_ like

him to be sixteen minutes late already just when I want to get this

over. He never understands anything about--about people when they're

young. And the first thing he's sure to ask is whether you've got any

money. Have you, Paul?"

"Stacks," said the Airman, reassuringly. "Old Hugo made it sixty, as a

wedding-present. Decent of him, wasn't it?"

They turned by the blackboard with the chalked-up notices of arrivals

and departures, and Gwenna ruefully went on with her prophecy of what

her Uncle would say.

"He'll say he never _heard_ of anybody marrying an Airman. (I don't

suppose he's ever heard of an Airman at all before now!) Ministers, and

quarry-managers, and people _with some prospects_; that's the sort of

thing they've always married in Uncle Hugh's family," she said

anxiously. "And he'll say we've both behaved awfully badly not to let

him know before this. (Just as if there was anything to know.) And

he'll say you turned my silly head when I was much too young to know my

own mind! And then he's quite, quite sure to say that you only proposed

to me because---- Well, of course," she broke off a little reproachfully,

"you never even _did_ propose to me properly!"

"Too late to start it now," said her lover, laughing, as the knot of

porters surged forward to the side of the platform. "Here's the train

coming in!"

* * * * *

Now Gwenna was right about the first thing that Uncle Hugh would ask,

when, after a searching glance and a handshake to this tall young man

that his niece introduced to him at the carriage-door, he carried off

the pair of them to the near-by hotel where the Minister always put up

on his few and short visits to London.

"Well, young gentleman," he began, in his crisp yet deliberate Welsh

accent. He settled himself on the red plush sofa, and gazed steadily at

Paul Dampier on one of the red plush armchairs. "Well! And have you got

the money reck-quisite to keep a wife?"

"No. I'm afraid I haven't, sir, really," returned the young man, looking

frankly back at him. "Of course I'd my screw. Three pounds ten a week, I

was getting as a pilot. But that was only just enough for myself--with

what I had to do for the Machine. Of course I'm going to have her--the

Flying Machine--taken up now, so----"

"It's very little faith I have in such things as flying machines.

Flying? Yes, in the face of Providence, I call it," said the Reverend

Hugh, discouragingly, but with the dawn of some amusement in his

searching eyes. "What I say about the whole idea of Avi_ay_-shon

is--_Kite-high lunacy!_"

"Uncle!" scolded Gwenna; blushing for him. But the young Airman took the

rebuke soberly enough.

"And out of that income," went on Uncle Hugh, still looking hard, at

this modern suitor in that incongruous red-plush setting with its

Nineteenth Century clocks and ornaments, "out of that income you will

not have saved very much."

"Afraid not, sir," agreed young Dampier, who, last night, had been down

to his last eightpence ha'penny and a book of stamps. "Not much to put

by, you know----"

"Not even," took up the Reverend Hugh, shrewdly, "enough to pay for a

special marriage licence?"

"Oh, yes, I had that. That is, I've raised _that_"--("Good old Hugo!" he

thought.)--"and a bit over," he added, "to take us for some sort of a

little trip. To the sea, perhaps. Before I go on Service."

"Military service, do you mean?" said the Reverend Hugh. "Mmph! (I never

have held with soldiery. I do not think that I have ever come into

act--ual con--tackt with _any_.)"

"Yes, I probably am going on Service, Mr. Lloyd," answered the young

man, quickly, and with a glance at the girl that seemed to indicate that

this subject was only to be lightly dealt with at present. "When, I am

not sure. Then I shall get my pay as a Flight-Lieutenant, you see.

Shan't want any money much, then. So _she_"--with a little nod towards

the small, defensively set face of Gwenna, sitting very straight in the

other red-plush armchair--"she will get that sent home, to her."

"_I_ shan't want all your pay, indeed," interrupted the girl, hastily.

It seemed to her too revoltingly horrible, this talk about money

combined with this sense that a woman, married, must be an _expense_, a

burden. A woman, who longs to mean only freedom and gifts and treasure

to her lover!

"Oh, a woman ought never, _never_ to feel she has to be _kept_," thought

Gwenna, rosy again with embarrassment. "If men don't think we _mind_,

very well, then let all the money in the world be taken away from men,

and given to us. Let _them_ be kept. And if they don't mind it--well,

then it will be a happier world, all round!"

And as she was thinking this, she announced eagerly, "If--if you _do_ go

away, I shall stay on with the Aeroplane Lady, as I told you, Paul. Yes.

I'd _much_ rather I should have something to do. And I'd get nearly a

pound a week, and my keep. Besides! I've got my own money."

"Which money, dear?" asked Paul Dampier.

The quick eyes of the Reverend Hugh had not left the young man's face.

They were fixed still more scrutinisingly upon it as the old man

interposed, "Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Dampier, that you were not

aware that my niece had got a little bit of her own?"

"There! I _knew_ Uncle would say that!" burst out the young girl, angry

and blushing and ashamed. "I knew he'd say you were only marrying me

because of that! _He_ won't believe that it wouldn't make any difference

to you that I've got seventy-five pounds a year!"

"Seventy-five pounds a year? _Have_ you?" said the young man, surprised.

"Really?"

And it was Gwenna's turn to be surprised as his frank face cleared and

his voice took a very relieved note.

"I say, how topping! Make no difference to me? But it does. Rather!" he

declared. "Don't you see that I shall know you won't _have_ to work, and

that I shall be ever so much more comfortable about you? Why did you

never tell me?"

"I forgot," said Gwenna truly.

And the Reverend Hugh suddenly laughed aloud.

At the same time he hoped he had concealed his relief, which was great.

His youngest sister's girl was not going to be snapped up by a

fortune-hunter after all. That had always been his anxiety. Seventy-five

pounds a year (certain) remained a considerable fortune to this

Victorian. In his valley quite a large house, with a nice bit of garden,

too (running steeply up a mountain-side), was to be had for a rent of

sixteen pounds. He would have thought of that himself.... But the leggy,

fair-haired boy who was now smiling across the oval hotel table at his

Gwenna had meant only what he had said. The older man realised that.

So, waiving for the present the question of means, the Reverend Hugh

went on, in rather a modified tone, to ask other questions.

Asking questions of the newly accepted suitor seems to be all that

remains for the parent or guardian of our times. It is the sole survival

of that potent authority which once disposed (or said it disposed) of

the young lady's hand. Clearing his throat with the same little sound

that so often heralded the words of some text from his pulpit, the

Reverend Hugh began by inquiring where Gwenna, after her short

honeymoon, was supposed to be going to live.

Nowhere new, it appeared! She had her berth at the Aircraft Factory, her

room at Mrs. Crewe's cottage for when young Dampier was away. (Yes; from

his tone when he spoke of it, evidently that parting was to be kept in

the background and evaded as much as possible for the present.) And if

he were in London, he had his rooms in Camden Town. Do for them both,

perhaps.... His bachelor digs.; not bad ones....

Well, but no _house_? Dear me. That was a gipsyish sort of plan, wasn't

it? That was a new idea of setting up housekeeping to Uncle Hugh. He,

himself, was an old bachelor. But he could see that this was all very

different from the ideas of all the young couples in _his_ time. When

Gwenna's father, now, was courting Gwenna's mother, well! he, Hugh

Lloyd, had never heard such a lot of talk about _Mahoggani_. _And_

tebbel-linen. _And_ who was to have the three feather-beds from the

old Quarry-house; Gwenna's mother, or Gwenna's mother's sister----

(All this the Reverend Hugh declaimed in his most distinct Chapel voice,

but still with his searching eyes upon the face of the husband-to-be.)

The idea of most young girls, in getting married, he thought, was to get

a nice home of their own, as soon as possible. A comfortable house----

("I hate comfortable houses. So stuffy. Just like a tea-cosy. They'd

_smother_ me!" from Gwenna.)

But the House, her Uncle Hugh had _Olwes_ understood, was the Woman's

fetish. Spring-cleaning, now; the yearly rites! And that furniture. "The

Lares," he went on in an ever-strengthening Welsh accent. "The

Pen--nates----!"

"Oh, _those_!" scoffed the girl in love. "_Those_----!"

So Gwenna didn't seem to think she would miss these things? She was

willing to marry without them? Yes? Strange!... Well, well!

And what about this marriage-in-haste? Where was it to take place? In

that Church in Hampstead? A Church. Well! He, as an orthodox dissenting

minister, ought not, perhaps, to enter such a place of worship. But,

after all, this was not at home. This was only up here, in England.

Perhaps it wouldn't matter, just this once.

And who was the clergyman who was going to officiate at the cerrymonny?

And what sort of a preacher, now, was _he_? (This was not known.)

And Mr. Dampier's own relations? Would they all be at the Church?

Only one cousin, he was told. That was the only relation Paul Dampier

had left.

"Same as myself," said the Reverend Hugh, a little quietly. "A big

family, we were. Six boys, two girls; like people used to have. All

gone. Nothing left, but----"

Here, for the first time taking his eyes from young Dampier, he turned

upon his niece with an abrupt question. With a quick nod towards her

husband-to-be, he demanded: "And where did you find _him_?"

Little Gwenna, still on the defensive, but thawing gradually (since,

after all, Uncle Hugh had spoken in friendly tones to the Beloved),

Gwenna asked, "When, Uncle?"

"The time that counts, my girl," said the Reverend Hugh; "the first

time."

"Oh! I think it was--it was at a party I went to with my friend, Miss

Long, that I've told you about," explained Gwenna, a little nervously.

"And--and he was there. It's--_quite_ a long time ago, now."

"Dear me," said the Reverend Hugh. "Dukes! There is a lot of things seem

to go on, still, under the name of 'Party.'" And there was a sudden and

quite young twinkle in the eyes under the white thatch.

Paul Dampier, not seeing it, began hastily: "I hope you understand, sir,

that we were only keeping all this to ourselves, because--well----" He

cleared his throat and made another start. "If I'd had the--er--the the

privilege of seeing Gwenna at your place----" Yet another start. "We had

no _idea_, of course," said Paul Dampier, "until fairly recently----"

"Dear me," said the Reverend Hugh again. Then, turning to the young man

whom Gwenna had said he would accuse of turning the head of one too

young to know her own mind, he remarked with some feeling, "I dare say

she had made up her mind, that first time, not to give you a bit of

peace until you'd sent off that telly-gram to me!"

* * * * *

As he was taking the bride-to-be back to her Club, young Dampier said,

smiling: "Why, darling, he's not a bad old chap at all! You said he

wouldn't understand anything!"

"Well, he doesn't," persisted the mutinous Gwenna. But she laughed a

little, relentingly.

Twenty minutes later her lover took his leave with a whispered

"Good-night. Do you know that I shan't ever have to say it again

at this blessed door, after this?... And another, for luck....

Good-_night_--er--Miss Williams!"

She ran upstairs humming a tune.

She was so happy that she could feel kind even to old and unsympathetic

and cynical people to-night.

To-morrow she was to be Paul Dampier's wife.

It was hardly believable, still it was true!

War, now threatening to tear him from her, had at least brought him to

her, first, sooner than she had ever hoped. Even if he were forced to

leave her quite soon, say in a month's time!--she would have had him

all to herself first, without any of these small, fretting good-byes

that came so punctually following every meeting! She would have _been_

all his; his very own, she thought.

And here it may be said that upon this subject Gwenna Williams' thoughts

were curiously, almost incredibly vague. That dormant bud of passion

knew so little of its own hidden root.

Marriage! To this young girl it was a journey into a country of which

she had never formed any clear idea. Her own dreams had been the rosy

mists that obscured alike the heights and depths of that scarcely

guessed-at land. All she saw, clearly, was her fellow traveller; the

dear boy-comrade and sweetheart who would not now leave her side. What

did it matter where he took her, so that it was with him always?

Only one more night, now, in the long, narrow Club bedroom where she had

dreamed that queer flying dream, and so many others, so many longing

daydreams about him!

To-morrow was her wedding-day!

CHAPTER VII

HASTE TO THE WEDDING!

The Tuesday morning that brought Gwenna's wedding-day as the morning of

the official declaration of war.

It was in all the papers over which the girls at the Hampstead Club

pored, before they went off to their various avocations, staring,

half-realising only.

"Can it be true?... War?... Nowadays?... Good gracious!... D'you suppose

it means we shall really have to send an army of ours--an English

Army--over to France?... What do you think, Miss Armitage?"

Miss Armitage, the suffragette, then became voluble on the subject of

how very different all would have been if women had had the casting vote

in the matter. Intelligent women. Women with some insight into the wider

interests of their sex.... Not mere---- Here, by way of illustration,

this Feminist shot a vicious glance at Miss Long. Now, Leslie, dressed

in a lilac river-frock and wearing her black picture hat, was going

round the breakfast-table, under the very eye of the disapproving Lady

Principal with the gold curb brooch, on an errand of her own. She was

collecting from it the daintiest bits of dry toast, the nicest-looking

pats of butter, a white rose from the nosegay in the centre bowl, and

all that was left of the marmalade.

For to Leslie Long the question whether War was to be or not to be

seemed now to have been settled an age ago. The burden of that anxiety

was lifted. The other anxieties ahead could be put aside for the

present. And she turned, with a tranquil face, to the immediate matter

in hand. She was going to take a little tray up to Gwenna, whom she had

advised to have her breakfast in bed and not to dress until she should

make herself all ready for her wedding at that church at the foot of the

hill.

"'Good-morning, Madam Bride!'" said Leslie, smiling, as she came, tray

in hand, into the little room where Gwenna was still drowsily curled up

against her pillow. "Here's a little bit of sugar for the bird." She sat

down on the side of the bed, cutting the dry buttered toast into narrow

strips for her chum, taking the top off her egg for her.

"But I won't '_help to salt, help to sorrow_' for you," she went on

talking, just a trifle more brightly than naturally. "Curious thing

about a wedding, Taff--I mean _one_ of the curious things about a

wedding, is the wide desire it gives you to quote every aged, half-pay

proverb and tag that you've ever heard. '_Marriage is a_----"

"Not '_lottery_,' Leslie! Not that one!" begged the bride-to-be, sitting

up and laughing with her mouth full of toast. "We had it four times from

Uncle Hugh before we left him last night. '_Few prizes! Many blanks!_'"

she quoted joyously. All Monday she had been tremulously nervous. The

reaction had come at the right moment.

"'_Happy is the Bride that the sun shines on_,' then," amended Leslie.

"You'll be glad to hear it's shining like Billy-oh this morning."

"_I_ saw it," said Gwenna, nodding her curls towards the open casement.

"And I shall be getting '_Married in white, sure to be right_,' too!"

The white lingerie frock she was to put on was not new, but it was the

prettiest that she had. It lay, folded, crisp as a butterfly's wing and

fresh from the wash, on the top of her chest-of-drawers, with the white

Princesse slip--that _was_ new, bought by her in a hurry the day

before!--and the white silk stockings, and the little white suede shoes.

"'_Something old_, _something new_, _something borrowed_, _something

blue_,'" Leslie capped her quotation. "Where's the '_something blue_,'

Taffy?"

"Ribbons in my camisole; and I shall 'borrow' your real lace

handkerchief, may I?" said the bride-elect.

"Rather! All that I have, even unto the half of the best-man's

attention!" said Leslie, smiling gaily into the cherub face opposite.

But, even as she smiled, she felt that pang which is supposed to be

known only to the _man_ who sees his chosen pal prepare to be "married

and done for."

* * * * *

For this morning, that turned an adoring sweetheart into a wife, was

taking something of her own, of the bridesmaid's youth away.

Gwenna Williams married!

That meant one more girl-chum who would never, never be quite the same

again to a once-treasured companion. That bubbling fountain of innocent

confidences would now run low, as far as Leslie was concerned. No longer

would the elder, quickly-sympathising, rebellious-tongued girl be the

first to hear what happened to her little, ingenuous friend.

The girlish gossip would have a masculine censor to pass.

Leslie could foretell the little scene when it first happened.

She could hear Gwenna's eager, "Oh, Paul! Leslie would so laugh at----"

whatever the little incident might be. "I must tell her that!"

Leslie, the bachelor-girl, could imagine the tilt of the young husband's

blonde head, and his doubtful, "Don't see why it should be supposed to

interest _her_."

She could imagine the little wife's agreeing, "Oh! Perhaps not."

And again the young husband's, "Don't you think Miss Long gets a little

bit _much_ sometimes? Oh, she's all right, but--I mean, I shouldn't like

_you_ to go on quite like that."

It would be only after years of marriage that the once-close chum would

turn for sympathy to Leslie Long. And then it would not be the same....

The last of Leslie's forebodings seemed the most inevitable. She heard

Gwenna's soft Welsh voice, once so full of unexpectedness, now grown

almost unrecognisably sedate. She heard it utter that finally

"settled-down"-sounding phrase:

"_Say 'how d'you do' nicely to Auntie Leslie, now!_"

Ah! _That_ seemed to bring a shadow of Autumn already into the summer

sunshine of that bridal room with its white, prepared attire, its

bonnie, bright-eyed occupant. It seemed to show what must some day come:

Taffy middle-aged!

Also what probably would come: Taffy matter-of-fact! Taffy with all the

dreams out of her eyes! Taffy whose only preoccupations were, "Really

that stair-carpet's getting to look awful; I wonder if I could manage to

get a new one and put it on the upper flight?" or, "_I_ never saw

anything like the way _my_ children wear through their boots: it was

only the other day I got that quite expensive pair of Peter Pans for

little Hughie. And now look at them. _Look!..._"

Yes! This sort of change was wrought, by time and marriage and

domesticity, in girl after golden girl. Leslie had seen it. She would

probably see Taffy, the fanciful Celt, grown stodgy; Taffy, even Taffy,

the compactly supple, with all her fruit-like contours, grown

_stout_!...

Horrible thought....

Then Miss Long gave a protesting shrug of her slim shoulders. This

wouldn't do. Come, come! Not on the wedding-morning itself should one

give way to thoughts of coming middle-age! The rose, that must, some

day, be overblown, was only just a pouting bud as yet. There were days

and fragrant days of beauty still before her.

So Leslie picked up her chum's rough towels, her loofah and her

verbena-scented soap.

"I'll turn on the bath for you, Taffy, shall I? Hot or cold?"

"Cold, please," said the Welsh girl, springing out of bed and pattering

over the oil-cloth to fetch her kimono. "Perhaps to-morrow I shall be

able to have a real swim! Oh, won't that be gorgeous?" For the couple

had decided upon Brighton for the honeymoon. It was near enough to

London in case young Dampier received a summons; yet near also to

country-tramps and sea-bathing. "I haven't had a swim this year, except

in the baths. And you can't count that. Oh, _fancy_ the sea again,

Leslie!"

Leslie could guess what was at the back of that little exultant skip of

the younger girl's through the bathroom door. It was sheer innocent

delight over the prospect of being able to display to her lover at last

something that she did really well.

For they had never been by the sea together, he and she.

And she was a pretty swimmer.

* * * * *

"Now I'll be your maid for the last time, and fasten you up," said

Leslie, when she returned from the bathroom. "I suppose you know there

isn't a _single_ eye left at the neck of this dress? Always the way with

that laundry! It's nothing to _it_ that untidiness puts a man off worse

than anything else (this from me). Never mind, I'll hook it into the

lace.... That's all right. '_A bonnie bride is soon buskit._' Almost a

pity the girls will all have gone--though I know you'd hate to have them

staring. D'you know, you _are_ a little pocket-Venus? No, I'm _not_

piling it on. You're lovely, Taffy. I hope the Dampier boy tells you so,

very often and much. He's vastly lucky."

"It's me that's lucky," said the girl in all-white devoutly. "Now

where's my hat?"

"Do you think you're going to be allowed to get married in a _hat_?"

"My best white one with the wings, I meant."

"Pooh! I've arranged for you to have these," said Leslie, and brought

out a cardboard box that she had been to fetch while Gwenna was having

her bath. From it she drew a slender chaplet of dark leaves, with round

white buds with waxen flowers.

"Orange-blossoms! _Real_ orange-blossoms," cried Gwenna, delightedly

sniffing up the sensuous perfume of them. "Oh, but _where_ did you get

them?"

"Covent Garden. I went down there this morning at five, with one of the

housemaids whose young man is at a florist's," explained Leslie,

standing above her to set the pretty wreath upon the pretty head. "Now

you look like a print of 'Cupid's Coronation,' or something like that.

'_Through his curls as the crown on them slips_'--I'll twist this a tiny

bit tighter. And here's the veil."

Gwenna stared. "A veil, too, Leslie?"

"Rather. Only chance you get of appearing in this thoroughly becoming

kit that carries us all back to the worst days of Woman's Enslavement.

May as well take that chance!" remarked Miss Long cheerfully, as she

shook out soft, transparent folds of finest white net that she herself

had embroidered, working late into the night, with a border of leaves in

white silk. "This is from me."

"Oh, _Les_-lie! You got it as a surprise for me," said the little bride,

much touched. "You worked all these beautiful little laurel-leaves----"

"Not laurel, child. Meant for myrtle. Pity your geography is so weak,"

rattled on Leslie, as she heard, outside the Club, the stopping of the

taxi which had brought the Reverend Hugh Lloyd to call for his

detachment of the bridal party. "Refreshingly unconventional sort of

wedding you're having in some ways, aren't you? '_The presents were few

and inexpensive_' (such a change from the usual report). '_The bride was

attended by one bridesmaid: her friend Miss Long, clad in mauve linen,

mystic, wonderful_'--(taking into consideration that it had done her

cousin for Henley last year). '_The ceremony proceeded without a hitch,

except for the usual attempt on the part of the officiating clergyman to

marry the bride to the best man._' Which must not be, Taffy. You must

remember that I've got designs on Mr. Hugo Swayne myself----"

"Don't, Leslie!" protested the bride. "You know I do so hate to think of

you getting engaged in that sort of horrible way--instead of just

because you can't _help_ it! If only there were somebody you could be

really in love with----"

"I shall be really rather in love with Uncle Hugh, I know," prophesied

the bridesmaid. "_What_ a pity he isn't thirty years younger! Come

along. He's waiting. I'm going to kiss _him_, anyhow. Got your gloves?

Right. Got my hankerfish? You won't _want_ to shed any tears into it,

but----"

But there was an added brightness in the green-brown eyes of the little

bride as she glanced round the girlish room where Leslie would pack up

and put everything to rights for her after she had gone.

Impulsively she put her arms round that good chum.

"You've been so--so frightfully sweet to me, Leslie, always. Thanks so

awfully----"

"_Don't_ kiss me through a veil, my child!" protested Leslie, drawing

back. "D'you want to bring me ill luck?"

"Oh, Leslie! I should want to bring you all the good luck in the world,"

cried the younger girl, earnestly, over her shoulder as they went out.

"If I were given three wishes _now_ for a wedding-present, one of them

would be that you would some day be as happy as me!"

"My dear lamb!" said Leslie lightly, running downstairs after her, "How

do you know I'm not quite as happy in another--in my own way?"

Gwenna shook the curly head under the orange-blossom wreath and the

misty veil. It seemed to her that there was only The One Way in which a

woman could be happy.

"And the other two wishes?" suggested Leslie, at the sitting-room door.

"What are they?"

"Mustn't tell," smiled the little bride of Superstition with her finger

at her lips. "If I told they _might_ not come true!"

* * * * *

Very earnestly she hoped that those two wishes might come true. She

thought of them again, presently, as she stood, there in church, a

small, white-mist-clad figure, backed by the coloured window and the

crimson altar. She had the kindly glances upon her of her uncle, of her

tall girl-chum, and of Hugo Swayne--who wore a perfect morning coat with

a white flower and grey trousers, admirably pressed by his man Johnson.

Hugo, but for his Chopin stock, would have looked the very model of a

prosperous and conventional bridegroom. He did, in fact, look far more

like the popular conception of a bridegroom than did young Paul Dampier

in his well-cut but ancient grey tweed suit.

--"The only togs I've got in the wide world," he'd confided to Gwenna,

"except working clothes and evening things!"

She stood with her hand in his large, boyish one, repeating in her soft,

un-English accent the vows that once seemed to her such a vast and

solemn and relentless undertaking.

"_To love, honour, and obey ... as long as we both shall live...._"

It seemed now so little to have to promise! It seemed only a fraction of

all that her heart gave gladly to the lord of it!

"_Till Death us do part_," she repeated quietly.

And it was then she thought of the two wishes. One was that Paul should

be always as much in love with her as he was at that moment.

She was too young fully to realise the greater wisdom of her own second

wish.

_It was that she herself should always remain as much in love with

Paul._

If only God would be very, very kind to them, she thought, and allow

just this to be!

* * * * *

"And you sign your name here," said the clergyman in the vestry to the

newly-made husband, who put down in his small neat handwriting, "Paul

Dampier, Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps," on the grey-blue sheet, which,

duly witnessed and blotted, he was going to tuck away into the

breast-pocket of his tweed jacket.

"No. Those marriage lines are not yours," the parson stopped him with a

smile. "Those are the property of your wife."

Gwenna, dazed, realised that this referred to herself. She took the

folded marriage-certificate and slipped it into the white satin ribbon

girding her pretty frock. She looked very childish for "a wife"! But for

that bright wedding-ring on her finger (half a size too large for it)

she might have passed for one of the veiled and white-clad First

Communicants of an Easter Sunday in Paris. Then she turned up the little

face, from which the veil had been thrown back, to be kissed by the

others who had followed them into the vestry. Vaguely she heard

Leslie's voice, arranging in murmurs with Hugo Swayne. "No. Perhaps I'll

come on afterwards.... After I've helped her to change.... No; you take

Mr. Lloyd and feed him somewhere. No! I'm sure those two won't want to

come on to any lunch. Lunch? My dear man!... Send them in your car to

Victoria and Johnson can bring it back.... They'll be getting away at

once."

At once! Gwenna looked up into her young husband's blue eyes.

He caught her hand.

"Got you now," he said softly. "Can't run away this time."

By rights she should have walked down the church on his arm. But he did

not loose her hand. So it was hand-in-hand, like children, that they

hurried out again, ahead of the others, into the sunshine of the porch.

The merry breeze took the bride's veil and spread it, a curtain of mist,

across the pair of them. Gwenna Dampier caught it aside, laughing

gleefully as they stepped out of the porch. The gravity of the service

had sparkled into gaiety in their eyes. He crushed her fingers in his.

Her heart sang. They would be off----! It was almost too lovely to be

true, but----

Yes. It _was_ too lovely to be true.

A shadow fell across the path; across the bride's white shoe.

Johnson, Hugo's man, who had been waiting with the car, stepped quickly

up to the bridegroom.

"Excuse me, sir, but this message.... Came just as you'd gone into

church. I waited. The woman brought it on from your rooms, sir."

Paul Dampier took the wire and read it.

The white-frocked girl he had just married stood at the church entrance

watching him, while the breeze lifted her veil and stirred her curls and

tossed a couple of creamy petals, from her wreath, on to the breast of

his coat. She herself stood motionless, stony.

She knew that this was no wire of congratulation such as any bridal

couple may expect to receive as they come out of church from their

wedding. She knew, even before she heard his deep voice saying--blankly

and hurriedly:

"I say. It's from the War Office. I shall have to go. I've got to leave

you. Now. I'm ordered to join at once!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM

Gwenna Dampier was always to be truly thankful that at that thunderbolt

moment of parting at the church door from the lover who had only been

her husband for the last quarter of an hour she had been too dazed to

show any emotion.

As at the Aviation Dinner she had been numbed by excess of joy, so, now,

the shock had left her stony. She knew that she had turned quite a calm

little face to the concerned and startled faces of the others as they

hurried up to ask what was happening that Paul should be getting into

that car alone. It was as quiet and calm to receive Paul's last kiss as

he held her strained for a moment almost painfully close to him,

muttering, "Take care of yourself, Little Thing."

At the moment it struck her as rather funny, that.

_She_ was to take care of herself! She, who was just to stay quietly at

home, doing nothing. And this was what he told her; he, who was going

off on service, _where_, he himself didn't know. Off, to serve as an

Army Aviator, a flyer who swooped above enemy country, to shoot and to

be shot at; every instant in peril of his life.

She even smiled a little as the motor rattled down the hill with him,

leaving her to Leslie, and to Uncle Hugh, and to Mr. Hugo Swayne.

She found herself thinking, sedately, that it was a good thing Paul had

got most of his field service equipment yesterday; shopping while she

had shopped, while she had bought the white shoes and the silk

stockings, the Princesse slip and the handful of other dainty girlish

things that had been all the _trousseau_ she could collect in such a

hurry. Yes, Paul was all ready, she told her friends. She wouldn't see

him again before he left London, she expected.

She did not see him again.

That night at the Club, when she was still dazedly quiet--it was Leslie

Long who had to swallow lumps in her own throat, and to blink back

starting tears from her eyes--that night there arrived the first note of

his that had ever been addressed to:

"_Mrs. Paul Dampier._"

It was scrawled and hurried and in pencil. It began:

"My darling Wife." It told her to address to the War Office until

she heard from him, and that she would hear from him whenever he

could manage it. It ended up, "_I was so jolly proud of you because

you took it like that, you can't think. I always thought you were a

sweet Little Thing. I knew you'd be a plucky Little Thing too.

Bless you. It's going to be all right._

"_Your affectionate husband_,

"P. D."

It was Leslie who cried herself to sleep that night; not Gwenna Dampier.

Only gradually the girl came out of the stupor that had helped her, to

the realisation of what had really happened. He'd gone! She'd been

left--without him! But as one source of help disappeared, another came

to hand.

It was that queer mixture of feelings that the more enlightened young

women at the Club would have called "The conventional point of view."

Miss Armitage at the Club tea-table said to her friends, "Nayowh, I

don't consider them at all 'splendid,' as you call it, these girls who

go about quite smiling and happily after their husbands have embarked

for the War. Saying good-bye without shedding a tear, indeed; and all

that kind of thing. Shows they can't _care_ much. Heartless!

Unsensitive! Callous, I call them."

The art-student with the Trilby hair, who was never quite certain

whether she agreed with all Miss Armitage's views or whether she didn't,

remarked that really--really anybody who'd seen Miss Williams' face when

that young man called for her _couldn't_ help thinking that she cared.

Most awfully. If _she_ didn't make a fuss, it must be because she was

rather brave.

"Brive? _I_ don't call it that," declared Miss Armitage. "It's just 'the

thing to do' among those people. They've made a regular idol of this

stupid, deadening Convention of theirs. They all want to be alike.

'Plucky.' 'Not showing anything.' Pah! I call it crushing out their own

individuality for the sake of an ideal that isn't anything very _much_,

if you ask me. They all catch it from each other, these wretched Army

men's wives. It's no more _credit_ to them than it is to some kinds of

dogs not to howl when you hold them up by their tiles."

The Trilby art-student put in shyly, "Doesn't that show that they're

well bred?"

Miss Armitage, the Socialist, fixing her through her glasses, demanded,

"When you sy 'Well bred' d'you mean the dogs are--or the women that

don't cry?"

"Well--both, perhaps," ventured the art-student, blushing as she helped

herself to jam. Miss Armitage, with her little superior smile, gave out,

"There's no such thing as well bred, what _you_ mean by it. What you

mean's just pewer snobbery. The reel meaning of well bred is somebody

who is specially gifted in mind and body. Well, all you _can_ say of the

minds of Army people is that they haven't got any. And I don't know that

_I'm_ impressed by their bodies."

Here a student of music from the other side of the table said she saw

what Miss Armitage meant, exactly. Only, as for Army people, Gwenna

Williams couldn't have been called that. Her people were just sort of

Welsh Dissenters, awfully _against_ soldiers and that kind of thing.

"Doesn't matter. She's the sort of girl who's just like a chameleon:

takes all her colour from the man she's supposed to be in love with,"

said Miss Armitage loftily. "She'll know that she'll never _keep_ him

unless she's just like the class of women he thinks most of. (As it is,

I don't see what that empty-headed girl's got to keep a man _with_.)

So, as I say, she'll _suppress_ her own identity, and grow the kind 'He'

happens to like."

The art-student murmured that she supposed it didn't really _matter_, a

girl doing that. Provided that the new "identity" which was "grown to

please the man" were a better one than the old.

Miss Armitage the Feminist, sniffed; silent with contempt for this idea.

Then she turned again to the student of music, to conclude the

summing-up of the new bride's character.

"She'll be positively stimulated and buoyed-up, all the time, by the

thought that 'He' considered it plucky of her to go on as if she was

quite pleased that he was fighting!" declared the lecturer. "You see! By

and by she'll believe she _is_ pleased. She'll catch the whole

detestable Jingow spirit, _I_ know. Syme attitude of mind as the Zulu

who runs amuck at the sound of a drum. Hysterical, that's what _I_ call

what's at the root of it all!"

* * * * *

But whatever Miss Armitage, the Cockney suffragette, chose to call it,

it was there, that Spirit.

In those few weeks after the declaration of war it spread and throve

over all England. It made Life still worth living, and well worth

living, for thousands of anxious sweethearts, and of mothers giving only

sons for their country, and of wives who missed closest comrades, and of

young widows who had but lately been made brides.

It inspired, through the girl he left behind him, the man who went to

war; and thus its influence became part of that subtle but crucial thing

which is known as the Moral of an Army, and of an Empire and of a

Civilisation.

It was, as Leslie Long, the lover of quotations, often quoted to herself

in those days:

"The Voice to Kingly boys

To lift them through the fight;

And comfortress of Unsuccess

To give the dead Good-night.

"A rule to trick the arithmetic

Too base of leaguing odds,

The spur of trust, the curb of lust,

The hand-maid of the gods."

* * * * *

Little Gwenna, the wife who had been left at the church door, took all

the help that Spirit gave her.

Two days after her wedding her Uncle Hugh went back to the slate-roofed

village that was wedged between those steep, larch-grown Welch hills.

But, though his niece found that this "dreat-ful" old man could be all

that was gentle and kind for her, she refused to go home, as he begged

her, with him.

She said she must live somewhere where she could "see a little bit of

what was going on." She must have some work, real work, to fill her

time. She thanked him; she would let him know directly she felt she

could come down to Wales. But just now, please, she wanted nothing but

to get back to Mrs. Crewe, her Aeroplane Lady at the Works. She'd go

back just as if nothing had happened.

She returned, to find changes at that Aircraft Factory.

CHAPTER IX

THIS SIDE OF "THE FRONT"

The first of these changes at the Aircraft Works was the sight of the

khaki-clad sentry at the entrance.

He was pacing up and down the bit of dusty road outside the shops; and

he stopped Gwenna peremptorily, not knowing that she was one of the

staff.