fort, the security of confidence, the
rapidity of resolution. He was no longer to taste the two purest joys of
a manly heart: steadiness of eye in attack, and the pride of watching
over a beloved peer."

_For him the beauty of war had diminished_.... War already so long, so
exhausting and cruel, and laden with sorrow! Will war appear in its
horrid nakedness, now that those who invested it with glory disappear,
now, above all, when the king of these heroes, the dazzling young man
whose luminous task was known to the whole army, is no more? Is not his
loss the loss of something akin to life? For a Guynemer is like the
nation's flag: if the soldiers' eyes miss the waving colors, they may
wander to the wretchedness of daily routine, and morbidly feed on blood
and death. This is what the loss of a Guynemer might mean.

But can a Guynemer be quite lost?

* * * * *

Saint-Pol-sur-Mer, _September_, 1917
(From the author's diary)

Visited the Storks Escadrille.

The flying field occupies a vast space, for it is common to the French
and the British. A dam protecting the landing-ground screens it from
the sea. But from the second floor of a little house which the bombs
have left standing, you can see its moving expanse of a delicate, I
might say timid blue, dotted with home-coming boats. The evening is
placid and fine, with a reddish haze blurring the horizon.

Opposite the sheds, with their swelling canvas walls, a row of airplanes
is standing before being rolled in for the night. The mechanicians feel
them with careful hands, examining the engines, propellers, and wings.
The pilots are standing around, still in their leather suits, their
helmets in their hands. In brief sentences they sum up their day's
experiences.

Mechanically I look among them for the one whom the eye invariably
sought first. I recalled his slight figure, his amber complexion, and
dark, wonderful eyes, and his quick descriptive gestures. I remembered
his ringing, boyish laugh, as he said:

"And then, '_couic_'...."

He was life itself. He got out of his seat panting but radiant,
quivering, as it were, like the bow-string when it has sent its shaft,
and full of the sacred drunkenness of a young god.

Ten days had passed since his disappearance. Nothing more was known than
on that eleventh of September when Bozon-Verduraz came back alone.
German prisoners belonging to aviation had not heard that he wa