Tidings of the new hero of LiÉge floated up to our ward within the hour. There was slight concussion of the brain; there were scalp wounds which had had to be stitched up; and there were many bruises; but the surgeons reported no bones broken, and complete recovery only a matter of days. Even the monoplane itself, we heard, was singularly little damaged. All this would have appeared miraculous, and the pious Belgians would have attributed it to direct intervention of the Blessed Virgin, had not the wrecked dirigible on examination told a silent story of the air scout's cleverness as well as his daring. Before swooping on the Zeppelin from above, he had apparently discharged bombs of his own on the balloon, which had burst before the monoplane dashed down on to it, and the great bulk had fallen away from under, without carrying the lighter machine to destruction. The theory which awaited corroboration from the aviator was that he had begun to plane down, despite some damage, and had actually fallen but a short distance, striking earth a hundred yards away from the wrecked dirigible.

Nobody talked about anything except the feat of the foreign air scout. The roar of the cannon from the fort had ceased to make us jump; and it was better to chat about Monsieur Mars than to murmur in each other's ears, "How long before THEY slip round the forts and get into the town?" I made up my mind that whatever happened, nothing should tear me from LiÉge while Eagle March was there. And when Tony sent up word begging to see me on important business, in imagination I was defending Eagle's hospital cot (naturally with him in it!) against a troop of uhlans. In that mood, Tony's arguments about my going away made as much impression as the chirp of a sparrow on a man stone deaf in both ears.

"Wild horses, much less wild uhlans, couldn't drag me out of this place," I said, feeling as brave and firm as a story-book heroine, though to Tony I may have seemed obstinate as a mule. "What do you take me for, boy? Go comfortably away in a motor car to safety indeed, while Eagle March is here, lying at death's door? Or if he isn't at death's door, it's only because the angels slammed it in his face."

"Eagle March! What are you talking about?" Tony wanted to know, looking dazed. I had forgotten that there was no reason why he should have guessed the hero's identity, and I dashed into explanations. "Don't tell people yet," I said, "because he mayn't want it talked about, but he's the 'Monsieur Mars' who's been helping Belgium since the very first day of war. Why, they say he gave the warning that the Germans would cross the frontier. Isn't it like him? And how silly of us not to guess, the minute we heard the name of 'Mars!'"

"It never entered my head, though I've heard it a dozen times before this last feat," said Tony. "People were talking about other stunts Mars had done. But I supposed he was some French Johnny. Are you sure you're right? Sure it's March, I mean? It does seem a little too strange to be true, that he should turn up—or rather come down—here, of all places!"

"'Too strange not to be true,'" I quoted. "Strange things are the only things that happen in war, for a man like him—a man without a country. We might have known he would come to the rescue of Belgium! And I am sure I'm right, because I've seen him."

"Great Scott!" was all that Tony had to say for a minute. Then he went on in a changed and heavy tone: "I suppose you're nursing him?"

"No such luck!" I answered. "I'm not experienced enough. But I'm debating whether I might ask to see him, when he gets better, on the strength of old friendship. I don't think he'd mind my claiming acquaintance with 'Monsieur Mars.'"

"Mind? I guess not!" said Tony. "But how soon will he be better?"

"He'll be nearly well, they hope, in a few days."

"He'll have to be, by George, if he wants to get out of town with his monoplane before the Germans walk in. The Belgians are the heroes of Europe, but there aren't enough of 'em to hold out forever, and that's why you must go with us, Peggy, March or no March. He'd be the first one to tell you to clear out, if he had his wits about him."

"I dare say he would, but he hasn't got them yet," I replied calmly. "You don't really expect me to leave him, do you, Tony, after—after all I've confessed to you?"

"I expect you to see reason," Tony lamely persisted. "There's just one thing to do, and that is to scoot while there's a chance. If I were alone without the mater and Milly, I'd say let's hang on for a day or two longer and run the risk—though running it might make me overstay my leave. That would be nothing, though. I wouldn't think of myself in any way. But I can't let my mother and sister go without me to look after them as well as I'm able. I can't ask them to stop, and they wouldn't if I did, for they're wild to get away. Yet how can I let you stay here alone? March would be furious with you, if he came back to himself and found you hanging on."

I laughed. "He couldn't kill me!"

"The Germans could."

"In spite of the red cross, and my lovely cap and apron? Well, I'm not afraid. And Eagle will never know that I stopped for his sake when I might have gone. I'm not sure I shouldn't have stayed in any case."

"I'm sure you wouldn't, if I'd had to use force. But you see what a position you put me in, Peggy. How can I, a chap you don't care a snap for at heart, hope to drag you away from the one who's got it all? And yet, what am I to do if you refuse to come?"

"Dear Tony," I said quietly, "I do care lots of snaps for you, more than I ever did, I think. But—oh, I must say it!—'snaps' is just the poor little word that's appropriate compared to what I feel for Eagle. All I have and am is for him, though he doesn't want it, and will never know, I hope, what a fool his 'little friend' is over him."

In silence Tony received the blow I had to strike. He stood with his head down for a minute, while I ached with pity for him and for myself—though I hated myself, too, because I was hurting him.

"You must go with Mrs. Dalziel and Milly," I said, when he didn't speak. "It's the only way. I shall be safe enough—as safe as the other nurses. Who knows," and I laughed uneasily to break the barrier of restraint, "but Eagle will take me away in his monoplane? That would be a splendid solution of the difficulty, wouldn't it?" I spoke only in jest, but Tony accepted the idea half seriously.

"Yes, that's exactly what will happen, I expect," he said. "You'll go off with him. Anyhow, I've lost you! I see that. You could never put up with me after this experience. That's true, isn't it, Peggy?"

The same thought, put in a less brutal way, had been heavy in my heart since my glimpse of Eagle lying unconscious on the litter. I knew then that I was married to my love for him and that any other marriage would be worse than illegal.

I hesitated how to answer, but perhaps my silence spoke as clearly as words. "Don't look as if you'd just lost your last friend, my poor child," Tony said, in his good, warm way. "You haven't lost me, you know, though I've lost you. And you needn't look so guilty, either, as if you'd murdered me and buried me under the leaves! I was always expecting this thing to come, though I didn't foresee the way of it. If ever I felt tempted to believe our engagement was getting to be the real thing, why, I said to myself, 'Wait till she sees March again before you begin to be cocksure, my man.' Well, now you've seen him. And I guess you've seen in the same minute that our experiment has failed."

"I'm—afraid that's true, Tony!" I sighed. "I can't help it! It wouldn't be fair to you for us to go on as we are. I shall have to break my word to you, if I'm to be faithful to myself."

"You won't be breaking any old word!" he said. "It was never an iron-clad promise. I teased you till you agreed to try how the thing would work. It's been my fault all through, and now I'll take my medicine. Our engagement was never insured against war risks, and when I get back my senses I'm going to be glad you saw March before it was too late. I—brought you two together, sort of inadvertently, as you might say, didn't I? But, honest Injun, Peggy, I'd do the thing over again, knowing all I know. I only wish—yes, before the Lord I do wish—that good may come of it to you both."

"You're an angel, Tony, a real angel!" I almost sobbed. "But you needn't think that anything will 'come of it' in the way you mean, because it won't. I don't delude myself. I don't even hope. All the same, I must be true—to my own heart. And I beg of you to forgive me because I didn't know it well enough before."

"There isn't any question of forgiveness," said he, with his head up, and his nice Billiken face very pink. "I bless you—bless you for all you've been or done to me. And I wouldn't forget or undo anything if I could, you can bet your life on that. I think I could bear the whole business like a man, if I could stay right here and see you through. But—there's mater and Milly to think of—and the regiment. And—and—oh, well, life's just one damn thing after another!"

Mrs. Dalziel and Milly came and pleaded with me after that, and tried to frighten me into going with them; but, as Milly burst out desperately at last, I was "as hard as nails." Tony had told them nothing, I found, about the failure of our experiment or the identity of Monsieur Mars. I well understood why, and was grateful—grateful for that and for many things; most of all for bringing me to Belgium, and neither grudging nor regretting what he had done. So, as a lover, Tony went out of my life; but as a friend, he never can go.

I had no time to cry or feel lonely, or tell myself what a beast I'd been, after the three had reluctantly left me to my fate; for when I went back on duty after the good-byes, it was to find that I had been sent for to hasten to the principal ward. Monsieur Mars was being delirious in English, and the doctors and nurses understood too little of the language to know whether he were merely babbling or pouring forth important information.

There Eagle lay in his narrow, white bed, clean and pale, with his head swathed in bandages, a very different man from the grimy, bloodstained vision that had flashed on me a few hours before. The merest stranger who had ever seen Captain March would have deserved no credit for recognizing him now.

The nurses waited eagerly for me to translate his mutterings; but he only mumbled again and again, "It's all over, all over!"

If I could guess at a sad hidden meaning for the words, it was one which need not be handed on to others; and I proved so broken a reed as a translator that I expected to receive marching orders, right-about face. Strange to say, however, though his eyes were half closed and he seemed to see nothing, know nothing that went on around him, after I had spoken in a low tone to his nurse Eagle stopped muttering. For a moment he appeared to listen, and then with a deep sigh as if of relief from pain or some heavy anxiety, the half-open eyelids closed. The slight frown which had drawn his brows together slowly faded away. He had the air of being at rest.

"One would almost fancy," said the head nurse, who had been watching the scene, speaking thoughtfully when she had beckoned me away from the bedside, "that this brave monsieur recognized your voice, Mademoiselle."

Then I took heart of grace and did what I had told Tony I meant to do. I said that I had met Monsieur Mars in England and America. I had recognized him at once when the Red Cross men brought him into the hospital, but I had said nothing of this at the time, because I had felt that it would be considered unimportant.

"On the contrary, Mademoiselle," answered that adorable woman, "it is of the greatest importance. This heroic monsieur has saved us from death. If there is anything, little or big, which we can do for him in return, how gladly will we do it! Your voice has soothed him in his unconsciousness. Who knows what your presence may do when consciousness comes back? Why, it would be like throwing away an elixir to waste you after this in the ward above. You are from now on promoted as assistant nurse to our hero."

She was a stout, plain person, with bulgy eyes and a pink end to her nose, but I saw her as the most beautiful woman the world has ever produced.

I took up my new duties at once, trying not to act as if the moon were my footstool. All the rest of the day and far into the night Eagle lay as if asleep, with occasional fits of restlessness which, somehow, I could always soothe; and this state, though it seemed alarming to me, was approved by the doctor. It was better, he said, that after concussion the brain should have for a while repose in unconsciousness. The symptom was not good when the patient talked rationally too soon. But if monsieur should waken and show signs of wishing to ask questions, he must be answered clearly and quietly, if possible by the Demoiselle Irlandaise who would best be able to understand and satisfy him.

The Demoiselle Irlandaise was advised by the matron to take her repose early in the night, in order to be ready for such an emergency as monsieur the doctor suggested. But the demoiselle felt no need of repose. Sleep seemed some strange and foreign thing. She sat through the night watching the hero of LiÉge; and though guns boomed and were answered, and the nurses occasionally discussed beneath their breath what would happen to us all when the Germans came, never in her life had that Demoiselle Irlandaise felt so happy and so useful.

She had the reward of her vigil toward dawn, four-and-twenty hours almost to the minute after the Zeppelin and its crew had been brought down. Suddenly Eagle opened his eyes and fixed them on the nurse. At first he stared as if dazed by what he saw; then came a flash of recognition which changed to incredulity.

"I'm—dreaming you!" he whispered huskily.

I bent over him with an invalid's cup of liquid food prepared for this emergency, kept hot in a vacuum flask. "No you're not dreaming me," I cheerfully replied as I made him drink. "It's Peggy, taking care of you. Now go to sleep again. I'll still be here when you wake up next time."

"But——" he went on, staring round the room; "where am I? The horse kicked me, I remember; only that seems so long ago! I thought—a lot of things had happened since then. I hoped—but I suppose it's all a dream about—about——"

"Being in Belgium?" I prompted him, seeing his sharp anxiety. "That's not a dream, but true. You're Monsieur Mars, the hero of LiÉge, because you brought down the Zeppelin and the men who came to drop bombs on us. We're all grateful to you, and praying that you may get well soon."

"Thank God that it is true!" he sighed. "I wanted to do something. I'd have been disappointed to wake up and find I'd only dreamed after all—to find that I was back in London. I was afraid for a minute it was the day of—but it's all right now. How is it that you're here? It seems——"

"Oh, I just happened to be travelling in Belgium with the Dalziels when the war broke out, and we got caught. They've gone now, but I stayed. The nurses let me help them a little. I do the best I can. I told them I'd met you at home. But every one here calls you 'Monsieur Mars.' They know no other name."

"Don't let them know any other. Don't let any one know."

"I won't. You needn't worry! Now, will you sleep, please?—or they may think I'm doing you more harm than good."

"You do me the greatest good. I'll sleep, yes. But first—tell me one thing more; about the Golden Eagle. I planed down part of the way, but the motor'd stopped working. The last I remember is when I began to fall."

"The Eagle's safe," I assured him. "Hardly hurt at all; and there's a Belgian flying man in LiÉge to-day, Simon Sorel, who knows you. His mechanic is working on the Golden Eagle. She'll be ready for you when you're ready for her."

"That will be soon. Good man, Sorel!" he said, and closed his eyes. "Little Peggy!" I heard him muttering later. But three minutes afterward he had dropped into a natural sleep.

"Magnifique!" was the Belgian doctor's verdict in his next round, when Eagle had waked again, and had been attended by a nurse wiser and more experienced than I. There was little that I was allowed to do for him, but that little was a joy worth being born for; and I could have died of happiness to see how, when he was awake and fully conscious, his eyes followed me when I moved about. But it was better to live than to die just then, and I did live with all my might. I lived in every nerve and vein for those two days while "Monsieur Mars" was my patient. After the first twenty-four hours he insisted that he was well enough to be changed into the ward above, and leave his bed on the ground floor to some one more seriously injured. On the second day he sat up in a reclining chair, and announced that twelve hours more would see him out of hospital. Doctors and nurses protested that he would throw himself back into a fever, and the consequences might be serious; but as at that very time the danger of the town being taken was imminent, arguments for prudence lost their force. Toward evening on the third day Eagle, with his head and one hand still in bandages, was limping about the field where the Golden Eagle had been repaired; and when he came back it was to say that he thought he might get off at midnight with dispatches for the king in Brussels. He calmly announced this intention to me as I handed him an innocent cup of broth, better suited to a confirmed invalid than to a recovered aeronaut. But he quietly accepted the cup; and I saw by the look in his eyes that I was to expect the first real talk we had had together.

"What about your going with me, Peggy?" he asked, as simply as if he were proposing a short pleasure jaunt in a motor car. "You know, I wouldn't suggest it if I didn't think it honestly the safest thing for you. With luck we can make the trip in less than an hour, by air. Heaven knows how long it would take you by earth; and there's no one here, anyhow, to help smuggle you away if I go and leave you behind. I can't bear to do it! Besides, from Brussels, there's a good chance of your getting out with refugees, if you don't wait too long. And you can do as much good work in London as in LiÉge. What do you say?"

I wished that it might take us many hours to get to Brussels instead of less than one. But I didn't put the wish into words. I said only, yes, I would go; and many thanks.

"Good! That's settled then," said he.

"I must tell our matron," I hesitated. "I hope she won't think me a coward!"

Eagle smiled almost as he used to smile ages ago in London, when first we were friends, and he still thought of me as a "little girl." "Few people would call it a cowardly act for a young woman to fly out of a beleaguered town in a battered aeroplane with a battered airman, and I don't think your matron will be one of them. She'll thank you for what you've done here, and bid you God-speed. But don't go yet to tell her. I have some things to say to you. You'll be my passenger and 'observer' when I start to-night, but we'll have no chance to talk; and in these times we must face the fact that we may never have another chance this side of heaven."

The words went through me like a bayonet, for I knew too well how deadly true they were. I didn't try to contradict him, or talk about "hoping for the best"; for prattle of that sort seemed too futile. I only said, "Let's take this chance, then. I've plenty of time—hours yet. Stretch yourself out in the chaise longue and rest while we talk. I'll sit here by you on the window seat."

No one was very ill in this upper ward, which was kept for convalescents. Some of the men had been given cigarettes to smoke. Some were having their supper. It was generally known that Monsieur Mars and the Demoiselle Irlandaise had been friends in England; and the news having run round the wards that Monsieur Mars had practically discharged himself as a patient, we were allowed to talk in peace. Not an errand was found for me, not a nurse looked—or allowed us to see that she looked—our way.

"I didn't mean to remind you of my existence, you know, Peggy, till I had something to say about myself worth saying," Eagle began, speaking lightly, yet with a nervousness he couldn't quite hide. "I told you that in my last letter. But Providence has stage-managed things differently."

"Yes. We didn't expect to act together in a continental theatre, did we?" I was deliberately flippant. "But I'm glad to be in this great play with you, even in one scene, and such a little part!"

"Maybe the part seems little to you. It doesn't to me! You've helped me to get well twice as soon as I should have done among strangers. Heavens! But I was glad to see your little face! I'd have told you that first morning when I waked up what I'm going to tell you now, if you had let me then. Things were rather mixed in my brain. I thought I was in London, and you'd found me at a sort of nursing home I retired into for a couple of days to get patched up, after that—er—that little accident I had. I suppose you heard something of it at the time, though I don't think you were on the spot to see."

"Tony told me you were in church, and that it was you who stopped the horses when they started to run away," I said, without beating round the bush, for I thought he was bidding for my frankness on this sore subject.

"I hoped I might have passed unrecognized; but I feared that was too much to expect. I was tempted to break my resolution and write to you after all, explaining why I went to Lady Diana's wedding. But I stuck it out because—well, because it was a resolution. Silly maybe! all the same, I had it a good deal at heart to find a new place for myself in the world before I made a sign to any of my friends, even loyal Peggy. Besides, I had a safe sort of feeling you wouldn't misjudge me."

"I'm glad you felt that," I said. "Almost glad enough to be glad you didn't write. Though—I should have liked to hear."

"Well, I thought of you a lot, if I didn't write. And I couldn't help looking at you in church that day. I sent you wireless messages with my eyes once or twice, although I knew it would be best if you didn't get any of them."

"I believe I did get them. I seemed to know that some one was calling me."

"It wasn't a S. O. S. call!" Eagle smiled. "I found—well, I found that I wasn't in distress, or need of help. That's precisely why I went to St. George's, Peggy. I wanted to test myself. Did you think the reason might be that?"

"No! I thought of a dozen things it might be, but never that one!"

"It was the only motive that could have taken me there. I felt it gave me a right to go, even though—if people who knew how things had been saw me, they might—well, they might think me guilty of very bad taste. But I didn't mean to be seen. I wasn't asked to show a card. I walked in early and chose a place at the back of the church. I trusted to the crowd to hide me, and it did. Dalziel may have caught a glimpse of me between women's hats, but he couldn't have been sure if it hadn't been for that affair afterward. That was bad luck, in a way, although I was glad, if the accident had to happen, that I could be of use. However, it didn't affect the question of my being in church. And I must tell you about that. I didn't go to England for the purpose of making the experiment with myself. It was another reason which took me there. But being in England, I—tried it—tried it with success."

"You mean me to understand that—you didn't care?"

"Not exactly that! I'm not made of iron or marble. I didn't sit there in church without a qualm. But the feelings I had were not those I'd thought I must defend myself against. What I felt was—was no more and no less than a rage of hatred against that damned—forgive me, Peggy!—against that——"

"Damned villain, Sidney Vandyke," I fiercely finished the sentence as he had meant to end it.

"I can't pretend that that word wasn't the only one to express my feelings for him on his wedding day," Eagle admitted. "Not because he'd taken Diana from me, though. That's the strange part! I found it out while she was being married to Vandyke, and it was the thing I'd wanted to find out. In the relief, I ought to have forgiven him everything. But I didn't forgive. The ruin he'd wrought on my career overtopped everything else in my mind even at that minute. If some great power could have put me in Vandyke's place at the altar, and given Diana to me instead of to him, I would not have taken her—not even with her love. It seemed to me that what she would call her love wasn't worth the name of love, after—what had passed. It was only the memory of all I'd felt for her which hurt just then, so far as she was concerned. But for him—God, Peggy! to see him at the height of his hopes and ambitions made me mad to choke his life out! It does me good to confess this to you now, for you're the only one on earth to whom I'd speak."

"Yet, when you went out of church, you saved him from danger of death!" I said thoughtfully.

"That's just one of life's little ironies, isn't it?" Eagle laughed a low and bitter laugh. "It occurred to me afterward that I'd spoilt a good melodramatic plot. Hero secretly goes to church to see the woman who jilted him marry the villain to whom he owes his ruin. Villain is killed before his eyes on the way to the wedding reception. Big climax!"

"I think it was more dramatic," said I, "for the hero to save the villain's life."

"Too conventional. Obvious sort of thing!" sneered Eagle. "But I am conventional and obvious, I suppose. I did what I did simply because I couldn't help it, and I'd probably do it all over again. I'd have regretted it afterward, perhaps, if Di—if Lady Diana hadn't been in danger, too. I bear her no grudge."

"You're very noble," I said.

"It's not nobility. It's more like callousness. I freed myself from Lady Diana on her wedding day, or found that I was free. But if you could see into my soul when I think of Vandyke, you wouldn't call me 'noble.' I honestly pray for the day when I can remember him with indifference, and when I can say of what he did to me that good is born of evil. That's what I'm working for. But the time hasn't come yet. Maybe it will if I can manage to make myself of real use in this war. I've done nothing yet except a little scouting."

"LiÉge thinks differently, and so will all the world when it knows."

"I'm not working to reinstate myself in the world's eyes, but in my own—and most of all to help Belgium. There are things one does just for the thing itself. I have a fellow-feeling with a country suffering unjustly. After what I've gone through myself, I seem to owe her allegiance, as to a friend who understands. The moment this war cloud began to gather, I thought it would burst over Belgium, and I crossed the frontier from France with the Eagle, to offer my services. I'm glad now I failed in the hope that brought me over from America to England. I wanted to join Shackleton's Polar expedition, but he had no need of me."

"So that was why you came to England?"

"Yes. I told you it wasn't for the sole purpose of testing my feelings at St. George's Church. Being in London——"

"I understand. But, oh, Eagle! To think you would have gone away for years without bidding me good-bye!"

"You don't quite understand yet or you wouldn't say that." His eyes were wistful. "I was disgraced—put beyond the pale, down and out, unless I could work my way up again out of the mud. Mentally, I was a sick man. Now I see clearer. I'm on my way to get well in spite of scars. Life or death will cure me soon. It doesn't much matter which!"

It mattered to me—mattered so much that I could not speak.

A few hours later I had said good-bye to all my friends at the LiÉge hospital. Again I was a passenger of the Golden Eagle, flying through darkness as once I had flown through sunshine. Hidden by the night, we winged our way to Brussels safely and surely, and landed outside the town after forty minutes in the air—forty minutes which seemed to me worth as many years.

We came down in a farm field, safely but not silently, and waked the farmer, and his three sons not yet of soldier age. They ran out with rifles prepared for any emergency, but a few words of explanation warmed their hearts to welcome us.

I with my little bundle—my only luggage—was taken to the wife and mother, who exclaimed over me as if I had dropped from another planet, and gave me a bed for the rest of the night. One of the boys offered to guard the monoplane while Eagle went off on the bicycle of the other into town with dispatches from General Leman to the king.

In the morning "Monsieur Mars" came back with the news that a party of English ladies were starting for home in the care of a clergyman, and that he had asked if I might go with them. They had consented to take me, and I must be ready in twenty minutes. An automobile belonging to an officer would call for me at the farm. It came promptly, and in it Eagle and I had our last minutes alone together. We talked cheerfully; but I knew as well as he knew that the chances were ten to one against our ever meeting again on earth.