l of the Moving Fortress waited upon Desmond's caprice.

The plans of the parts and sections had to be finished before these
could be fitted together and the permanent model of the Moving Fortress
set up. The Moving Fortress itself waited upon Desmond.

For, though Nicky could make and build his engine, he could not draw his
plans properly; and he could not trust anybody who understood engines to
draw them. He was haunted, almost insanely, by the fear that somebody
else would hit upon the idea of the Moving Fortress; it seemed to him so
obvious that no gunner and no engineer could miss it. And the drawings
Desmond made for him, the drawings in black and white, the drawings in
grey wash, and the coloured drawings were perfect. Nicky, unskilled in
everything but the inventing and building up of engines, did not know
how perfect the drawings were, any more than he knew the value of the
extraordinary pictures that hung on the walls and stood on the easels in
her studio; but he did know that, from the moment when he took Desmond
into his adventure, he and his Idea were dependent on her.

He didn't care. He liked Desmond. He couldn't help it if Drayton
disapproved of her and if Dorothy didn't like her. She was, he said to
himself, a ripping good sort. She might be frightfully clever; Nicky
rather thought she was; but she never let you feel it; she never talked
that revolting rot that Rosalind and Dorothy's other friends talked. She
let you think.

It was Desmond who told him that his sister didn't like her and that
Frank Drayton disapproved of her.

"They wouldn't," said Nicky, "if they knew you." And he turned again to
the subject of his Moving Fortress.

For Desmond's intelligence was perfect, and her sympathy was perfect,
and her way of listening was perfect. She sat on the floor, on the
orange and blue cushions, in silence and in patience, embracing her
knees with her long, slender, sallow-white arms, while Nicky stamped up
and down her studio and talked to her, like a monomaniac, about his
Moving Fortress. It didn't bore her to listen, because she didn't have
to answer; she had only to look at him and smile, and nod her head at
him now and then as a sign of enthusiasm. She liked looking at him; she
liked his young naivete and monomania; she liked his face and all his
gestures, and the poise and movement of his young body.

And as she looked at him the beauty that slept in her dulled eyes and in
her sallow-white fa