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.