feet or so, and quite
easily make out a submerged U boat. I was testing a new plane fitted
with a 90 h.p. R.A.F. engine--" He paused and quickly glanced at her,
for he realised his blunder the instant the slip had been made. Madame
was all eager attention--what did she know of the marques of aeroplane
engines!--"It was a day of rotten luck for me. I spotted nothing, and
late in the afternoon my engine began to overheat and miss fire. I did
my utmost to struggle towards Do----, Dunkirk, but the beastly thing
gave out altogether, and down I dropped into the sea. I had an
ordinary land plane without floats, and was obliged to cut myself
clear and keep up as best I could with my air belt. It was a weary
time, waiting to be picked up, all that night and all the next day;
the cold of the water struck right through me, and I was senseless,
like a dead man, when at last, thirty hours afterwards, one of our
destroyers found me floating there, picked me up, and carried me into
Dover. I was in hospital for six weeks, crippled with rheumatic fever,
and my heart went wrong. It is much better now, and I hope soon to get
back to flying again. I am still on sick leave."

"Poor heart," sighed Madame, and smiled to herself.... "He looked at
me," she explained long afterwards, "as if there was still life in his
poor strained heart. It was a real kindness to give it some gentle
exercise."

"And when you are well you will again fly for France?" she inquired.

"Ah, yes. I yearn for the day when the obdurate doctors will permit me
to fly again--for France.... And you, madame, who are so kind to a
poor crippled soldier, is it permitted to ask--"

"I am, alas, a widow." She paused, and though demurely looking at her
empty tea cup, saw his eyes light up. ["The silly boy was pleased that
I was a widow," she explained. "As if that mattered."] "My poor
husband fell for France--at Le Grand Couronne. That was eight months
ago, and I am still inconsolable. I love to meet the brother officers
of my dear lost husband. He was killed by a shell, close beside his
general, and I do not even know where he was buried." She delicately
wiped her eyes, and Rust murmured broken words of the deepest
sympathy. Yet he was not sorry to hear that his new friend was a
widow. It must have been a most pathetic scene.

Madame recovered from her sudden rush of grief--brought on by thoughts
of that unknown grave upon Le Grand Couronne!--and began to pull on
her gloves