Neither Diana nor I had ever been at Hendon. Captain March sent a motor car for us, and I saw Father and Di were both impressed by this. They thought he must have money (as all proper Americans have, according to their idea) apart from his future expectations. What I thought was, that having fallen in love with Di, nothing but a motor car could be good enough for a goddess, and—hang the expense!

Di, who was invited sometimes for a spin in friends' automobiles, had a fetching motor get-up which, eked out with one of those horrific headpieces flying people wear, could be used for a short flight. I had nothing of the sort, but Di offered to lend me her lined coat. After all, she owed the expedition and the airman to me.

It was a hired car, but, in Father's opinion, a dashed decent one. It flashed us out past the Marble Arch, straight along the Edgware Road, to the Flying Ground, which, even two years ago, was the favourite resort of fashion, especially female fashion. I had often wondered what it might be like out there, and was rather disappointed to see only some large flat fields close to the highroad, with a long line of low, uninteresting sheds ranged side by side. It did seem as if airmen, who must be brimming like full cups with wine of romance and imagination, ought to have invented sightlier houses for their beloved machines. But the very thought that the ugly huts were hangars gave a thrill. Captain March was to meet us at Hendon, but we didn't see him at first. As we arrived, an aeroplane went up, and a monoplane was circling the enclosure, giving sudden dips at fearfully steep angles as it took the turns, righting itself like a lazy, long-tailed eagle with far-spread wings as it came again into the straight. Captain March's hired chauffeur, who had been told exactly what to do, ran the car up a short road on the right, and stopped.

"That's the captain's hangar, my lord," said he to Father, pointing to a shed near which we had halted; and his arm hadn't time to drop before the man-made bird, which had been circling round, planed down and glided in at the wide-open door like a homing pigeon into a pigeon house.

It was beautifully managed, and so dramatic that it was like the climax of an act on the stage. Perhaps Captain March had been performing some feat before we came; anyhow, as he brought his monoplane to rest a lot of people standing about applauded him. In a minute he came almost running out of the shed straight toward us, in his leather clothes and leather helmet, with goggles pushed up to the top of his head. Instead of being proud of what he had done, whatever it was, he apologized abjectly for "being late," and I could see that Di was vain of her conquest. Lots of women were there, staring enviously at the pretty girl who knew a real, live airman—evidently, too, one of the popular ones; and Di loves to be envied. I'm afraid we all do, in the secret places of our hearts which we don't like to peer into, under the dust.

One thing about Di, which makes men adore her, is that she contrives to seem exquisitely sympathetic and enthusiastic without ever gushing. It's partly the shape of her eyes and the shortness of her upper lip, which combine together to give a lovely, rapt, brooding expression, that saves her the trouble of thinking up adjectives. With this look on, she appeals to all the love of romance and adventure in their hearts, I'm sure. They would do anything to win it for themselves. I would myself if I were a man, and didn't know her; so when Captain March took us into his hangar, and she turned on the look, I didn't blame him for forgetting the very existence of his small pal. It only made me sad.

"I thought I'd better take the Golden Eagle up for a short run, and test her before you came, to see that she was all right," he was still apologizing. "Then she behaved so well, I got going, and stayed up longer than I meant. But I saw the car stop, so I hurried down."

"I should think you did 'hurry down!'" laughed Diana. "The way you aimed at your hangar from far up in the sky, and shot in, was like a marksman aiming at the bull's-eye on a target, and getting it. What do you call 'testing' your monoplane? What had you been doing to make all those people applaud?"

"Oh, only a little upside-down flying," said Captain March, as he might have said "only a little breathing exercise." "You see, I make stability tests. That's what I'm for. And with my appliances, being upside down's no more to me than it is to a fly when he walks on the ceiling."

Di's eyes said, "You hero! you splendid, modest hero!"—said it so plainly that the hero faintly blushed, though it was hard to trace a blush on his face, burnt red-brown by sun and wind. My eyes said nothing at all, but if they had recited a whole page of Shakespeare's sonnets he would have been none the wiser.

He led us into the hangar, where two fascinatingly smudged mechanics were in attendance on the magic bird; and he remembered to be nice and respectful to Father. Explanations of the mechanism were ostensibly addressed to our parent, but in reality all the eloquence was for Di, whose eyes poured forth appreciative intelligence as stars pour forth rays. Captain March couldn't be expected to know, poor fellow, that Di, if obliged to choose between two deadly dull evils, would rather hear a cook tell how to boil potatoes than listen to any mechanical talk. However, it wasn't really needful to listen, if one's eyes were well trained; and Di was having the "time of her life" in meeting an airman.

Even I could see that this monoplane, fitted with Captain March's inventions, was a different looking creature from the other bird machines which were shooting up into the air, or darting back into their dens, all around us. The Golden Eagle's quiet, graceful wings, instead of being in a straight line with each other, were set at an obtuse angle one from another; and on the end of each were odd little extra triangular tips, hinged to the main wings. I longed to pour out questions, for the "why" of things, especially mechanical things, has interested me ever since I was old enough to pick a doll to pieces, to see what made its eyes open and shut. But Di was asking idiotic questions in the sweetest way, and Captain March was laughing and delighted. It pleased him a great deal more that she should want to know precisely why he had named his monoplane the Golden Eagle than if Father or I had catechized him with the trained intelligence of a scientist.

"I've been unoriginal enough, I'm afraid, to name my big baby after myself," he said, "my nickname being Eagle. The golden eagle, you know, is our national bird."

"So her hangar is 'The Eagle's Nest,'" said Di. "That's awfully nice. But why not name her instead the Winged Victory?"

"Wouldn't it be rather conceited?"

"Not after what she's already done, and shown that she can do. It's conceited of me to suggest it, though, for—for the Winged Victory is a sort of a nickname of mine since a fancy dress ball at the beginning of the season."

"It suits you exactly," said Captain March. "If Lord Ballyconal will let you be my first lady passenger, and if, after she's given you a run, you think her worthy, she shall be renamed the Winged Victory, provided you'll baptize her."

"Oh, Bally, dear, you will let me go, won't you?" Di pleaded, using her pet name for Father, which he likes because it sounds young and unparental. Then catching a bleak gleam in my eyes, she hastily added: "And afterward Peggy, if Captain March will take her up."

Father hesitated, but the newspapers and people at the Embassy ball who knew all about Eagle March had spoken so highly of the machine, that it seemed an insult to a famous airman's skill to refuse. The two mechanics wheeled the monoplane out of the shed, and Captain March explained how easy and safe he could make things for a passenger. Lots of men had been up with him, but he had never asked a woman. "Only a short flight, I'll take her," he almost pleaded. "I can give her a helmet. Perhaps you'd rather go first yourself, though, and see what it's like."

Father may not have had a particularly good time on earth, but anyhow, he preferred it to atmospheric effects. He said that he had no head for heights, but if Di and Peggy wanted to go, and Captain March was kind enough to take them—er—up, a tiny way into the—er—air, he supposed that in these days he ought not to offer any objections.

Captain March had the spare helmet ready (it looked so new and smart, I felt sure he had bought it for the occasion), and nothing stood between Diana the Huntress and her quarry—nothing except her own changing mood. I think it was the look of the helmet which gave her that sinking feeling of irrevocability which seems to sever you, as with a sword, from all the dear little safe things that have made up your life in the past. She glanced from the helmet which the airman held toward her to the monoplane spread-eagling on the ground. I saw her big eyes dilate as they fixed themselves anxiously on the passenger's perch, to which the honoured guest must climb, above the conductor's seat, crawling through the wire stays, or whatever you call them, which were like a spider's web inviting a fly. Diana turned pale. Even her lips were white. The shadows under her eyes darkened as if she were ill.

"You're—you're sure it's safe?" she faltered.

"Safe as a house. Safer than a jerry-built house," Captain March assured her cheeringly. "Look at these!" and he pointed out again all the features of his invention that made the automatic stability of the machine. "But if you——"

"Oh! I'm not afraid," quavered Di, her eyes roving in an agonized way over the crowd collecting to see the lovely girl taken up into the sky by the brave airman. "It isn't that. Only—it won't make me seasick, will it?"

"I've never had a passenger seasick," said Eagle.

"And—you won't turn upside down, will you?"

"Of course not!"

"Well, then, I—I'll go."

On with the condemned cap!—I mean the leather helmet. Diana's paling beauty was blotted out. Wrapped in her fur-lined cloak, she was trembling all over. Her hands, which she held confidingly out for the thick mittens Captain March had got for her, shook like the last leaves on a frozen tree.

"Think you're fit for it, Di?" Father asked anxiously.

"Yes, indeed!" came hissing through the helmet. But I felt it was only the tonic of other women's envy which was keeping her up. I was envying her, too.

Captain March helped Di scramble into her perch. His hand was steady and strong. All his life and skill and manhood were for her. She was tenderly yet firmly strapped into place, and told how she was to hold on, and not to be afraid. There would be some noise, but she mustn't mind; and there was the little apparatus Captain March had invented, by which a passenger could communicate with the conductor. It was something like the bulb you squeeze in a motor car when you want the chauffeur to turn right or left or stop.

"Press once if you're sick of it, and want to come down," said Eagle. "Twice if you want to go higher. There's a whistle close to my ear, so sharp it cuts through the motor noise."

My heart beat almost as fast as if I were in the monoplane myself when Eagle was ready to start, looking like a twentieth-century, leather-masked Apollo starting out to drive his sun chariot up to the zenith and down the other side. The motor purred, and the propeller began to revolve. Diana, tense as a stretched violin string, was hanging on already, like grim death. The two mechanics held the tail of the impatient giant bird, and when Eagle raised one hand, they let go. For perhaps fifty yards the Golden Eagle ran lightly over the turf on her bicycle wheels; then her master tilted the planes, and his namesake soared upward from the ground into the air.

As she went, through the noise she made I heard a shriek from the passenger. Diana's pride, which denied cowardice in the joy of being envied, was forgotten in the primitive emotion of fear. What my sister did I could not see, as the monoplane mounted so quickly; but almost at once I realized that she must have signalled her wish to descend, for the Eagle ceased to soar, dropped, and began gently gliding down. A moment later the great winged form was landing once more close to its own shed.

Father rushed to the rescue of his darling, and Captain March—out of his seat in a second—was unfastening the straps and anxiously extricating Diana from the passenger's perch. I couldn't help feeling ashamed before all the people—scornful or sympathetic, who were looking on—that my sister had shown herself a coward; but I was sorry for her, too. She had quite collapsed, and lay in Father's arms as Captain March unfastened her helmet. I wasn't mean enough to think of rejoicing because, in taking my place away, she had been tried and found wanting. Instead, I found myself really afraid that Captain March might despise the poor girl for the timidity which humiliated him as well as her. But I need not have worried. Pulling off the helmet in that clumsy way a man has with any sort of headgear, the wheel of braided hair Diana wore, wound over each ear in the Eastern fashion that came from "Kismet," was loosened, and a thick plait with an engaging wave at the end fell down on either side of her face. Standing, but supported in Father's arms, her head lay on his shoulder, her eyes closed, long curling lashes resting on marble cheeks. I had never seen her half so beautiful, and Captain March gazed at her as if he would gladly give his life for a reassuring smile.

"Shall I fetch a doctor?" he asked miserably. "There's sure to be one, somewhere around."

Before Father could answer, Di opened her eyes, and Captain March got the smile without paying the price.

"I—I'm all right," she breathed. "So sorry! I wasn't afraid, you know. It was my heart. It seemed to stop."

"Of course you weren't afraid," Eagle encouraged her. "I can never forgive myself for making you suffer."

Diana's smile graciously forgave the brutal fellow for his blundering, and she extricated herself from Father's arms, the colour slowly stealing back to her lips and cheeks. She shook her head a little, and the two braids, stuck full of tiny tortoise-shell hairpins, tumbled over her breast. Captain March nearly ate her up with his eyes, and then, through their windows, his soul might be seen worshipping, and begging the goddess's pardon on its knees.

"She's not strong," Father apologized. "It's my fault for letting her go up; I ought to have remembered her heart."

It's a great asset, a weak heart, for a person who has just made an exhibition of cowardice. Like charity, it covers a multitude of sins. I'd never before heard of Di's heart being weak; and at home, if there were a ball anywhere within twenty miles, she could always dance at it till morning. However, I was glad she'd thought of her heart in time, and saved the situation. It was an accommodating heart, for it came up smiling, when the petting Di got had satisfied her that she wasn't to be blamed for the fiasco.

"I think flying must be a wonderful experience for any one whose heart is quite right," she consoled Captain March. "It's a pity, for the credit of the family, you didn't take Peggy up first."

"I suppose she won't feel like going, after what has happened to you?" said he, remembering my existence.

"Oh, I do feel like it, more than ever," I exclaimed, "that is, if you don't mind risking another of us."

"I don't think we'd better trouble Captain March again," Father cut in. "He wouldn't like a second failure."

"He won't have one," I said. "My heart is as strong as a Gnome motor. Do let me go. It will give Di time to rest."

Whether that argument decided Father, or whether he really did hope I might reestablish the family credit for courage, I don't know; anyway, he made no further objections. The fur-lined cloak, helmet, and mittens were handed over to me. I crawled through the spider's web to the tiny throne vacated by its late queen, and was strapped in as Di had been. Not one qualm did I feel as I looked down over Eagle's leather-clad shoulder at the various instruments fixed on to what in an aeroplane corresponds, I suppose, to the dashboard of an earth-bound automobile: the revolution gauge, which Eagle had explained to us; the watch; the map to roll up on a frame, like a blind; the compass, the height indicator. I felt secure and happy in the thought that my courage would at least make my captain respect me. He had shown us how his invention enabled the monoplane to balance itself in meeting every gust of wind, or falling into an "air pocket," without any effort from the conductor. That assurance hadn't been enough for Di, Winged Victory, Goddess, and Huntress, but it was enough for humble Peggy. Besides, in the mood which had swept over me like a blinding flame of white fire, I didn't care what happened, provided it happened to Eagle March and me together. I should have liked him to aim straight for the sun, and never to come down again.

The last thing I said before we started was, "Go as high, please, as you would if you were alone. If I press the bulb, it will be twice, to fly higher."

Then came the starting of the motor, the wheeled run, and the leap into air. As we took wing, I could have sung for joy. I was so gloriously excited, I was hardly conscious of the noise of the engine. That helmeted head and the firm leather-clad shoulders beneath me seemed the head and shoulders of a god.

We circled over the enclosure. The Golden Eagle hadn't risen very high yet, but I had a queer feeling of being no longer related to any one on earth. I was with my champion, a creature of another sphere. Intoxicated with joy, I pressed the bulb twice. I could not hear the shrill whistle, but the driver evidently heard, for in obedience we shot up—up—up! The height indicator showed that we had reached the height of five hundred feet. I pressed the bulb again twice over. Eagle began to steer the monoplane in immense circles. I felt I could almost see our corkscrew-track in the air, like twisted threads of gold on blue. The hangars in the fields of Hendon were toy sheds on a green-painted tray. Even the aerodrome was no more than a big rat trap. London spread itself out beneath us, a vast dark patch, like a fallen cloud. A shaft of sunlight set a golden dome on fire. It must have been St. Paul's. For the third time I gave the signal to mount. For the third time Eagle obeyed. I wondered if he liked me a little for sharing the confidence he had in his machine.

A few white clouds floated lazily beneath us, like snowy birds of an intolerable brightness and titanic size. Then they joined together in a glittering flock, and lost the semblance of birds. The mass became a sparkling silver sea, with here and there a dark gulf in it like a whirlpool. The air grew biting cold. I felt it press on me through the fur-lined coat Di had lent, like blocks of solid ice. But the strange sensation only exhilarated me the more. "I'm not a coward, I'm not a coward. I'm brave!" The words sang themselves in my head to the accompanying roar of the motor.

It was a glorious, dependable roar, but suddenly, in the midst of a spiral movement, I noticed a change in the sound. A gurgle—a choking stammer. A spray of petrol dashed across my goggles.

"Now—what?" The question asked itself in my soul. But there was no fear with it, only an awed realization that this might be the end of things, as I had known them, in a very little world low down and far away. "What does it matter?" the answer came. But Eagle had turned round in his seat, and was handing me a spanner. Now he was motioning to me. If he spoke, I couldn't hear a word. Yet I understood from the gestures of one mittened hand what he hoped I might be able to do. Somehow, even then, the driving force of thought in my brain was to please him, to show him that he hadn't relied on me in vain, rather than to save us both from threatening danger, though danger I saw there must be. I was determined that the corporal should not fail the captain.

The thing I had to do, as I seized the situation, was to turn the spanner on a loosened nut in the petrol pipe, to which Eagle pointed. Reaching up with my right hand, I steadied myself with the left, and touched something hot, horribly hot. There was an involuntary flinch of the nerves as the heat burned through the thick mittens I wore and scorched my fingers, but I didn't scream, I'm glad to say, or let go the spanner. I screwed and screwed at the union, with the nasty smell of burnt wool, and perhaps flesh, in my nostrils. Then there came the glorious sensation of success as the song of the motor took up its old refrain again. No more choking and spluttering, and it was I who had cured it.

I gave a little sob of thanksgiving, because I hadn't failed; and a voice seemed to whisper far, far down under the renewed song of the engine, "What if this is a prophecy? What if, after Diana has left him in the lurch, it should be given to you to atone—to help or save him in some danger?"

The little voice was so strong, so clear, that I thrilled all over. What it said seemed to become part of an experience which I could never forget.